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CHILD AND COUNTRY 



BY WILL LEVINGTON COMFORT 



Lot & Company 

Red Fleece 

Midstream 

Down Among Men 

Fatherland 



GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 
NEW YORK 



Child and Country 

A Book of the 
Younger Generation 



BY 

WILL LEVINGTON gOMFORT 

AUTHOR OF "MIDSTREAM," "LOT & COMPANY," 

"DOWN AMONG MEN," "routledge 

RIDES ALONE," ETC., ETC. 




NEW YORK 
GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 



.■Afi 



«w 



Copyright, 1916, 
By George H. Doran Company 



APR 24 1916 
©CU428616 






k 



TO THOSE 

WHO COME AFTER THE WRECKERS 

TO THE BUILDERS 

OF THE RISING GENERATION 



FOREWORD 



. . . To-day the first glimpse of this manu- 
script as a whole. It was all detached pieces be- 
fore, done over a period of many months, with 
many intervening tasks, the main idea slightly 
drifting from time to time. . . . The purpose on 
setting out, was to relate the adventure of home- 
making in the country, with its incidents of ma- 
sonry, child and rose culture, and shore-conserva- 
tion. It was not to tell others how to build a 
house or plant a garden, or how to conduct one's 
life on a shore-acre or two. Not at this late day. 
I was impelled rather to relate how we found 
plenty with a little; how we entered upon a new 
dimension of health and length of days; and from 
the safe distance of the desk, I wanted to laugh 
over a city man's adventures with drains and east 
winds, country people and the meshes of posses- 
sion. 

In a way, our second coming to the country 
was like the landing of the Swiss Family Robin- 
son upon that little world of theirs in the midst 

[vii] 



FOREWORD 



of the sea. Town life had become a subtle perse- 
cution. We hadn't been wrecked exactly, but 
there had been times in which we were torn and 
weary, understanding only vaguely that it was 
the manner of our days in the midst of the crowd 
that was dulling the edge of health and taking 
the bloom from life. I had long been troubled 
about the little children in school — the winter 
sicknesses, the amount of vitality required to resist 
contagions, mental and physical — the whole 
tendency of the school toward making an efficient 
and a uniform product, rather than to develop the 
intrinsic and inimitable gift of each child. 

We entered half-humorously upon the educa- 
tion of children at home, but out of this activity 
emerged the main theme of the days and the work 
at hand. The building of a house proved a nat- 
ural setting for that; gardens and woods and 
shore rambles are a part; the new poetry and all 
the fine things of the time belong most intensely 
to that. Others of the coming generation gath- 
ered about the work here; and many more rare 
young beings who belong, but have not yet come, 
send us letters from the fronts of their struggle. 

It has all been very deep and dramatic to me, 
a study of certain builders of to-morrow taking 
their place higher and higher day by day in the 
thought and action of our life. They have given 
me more than I could possibly give them. They 
have monopolised the manuscript. Chapter after 

[ viii ] 



FOREWORD 



chapter are before me — revelations they have 
brought — and over all, if I can express it, is a 
dream of the education of the future. So the 
children and the twenty-year-olds are on every 
page almost, even in the title. 

Meanwhile the world-madness descended, and 
all Europe became a spectacle. There is no in- 
clination to discuss that, although there have been 
days of quiet here by the fire in which it seemed 
that we could see the crumbling of the rock of 
ages and the glimmering of the New Age above 
the red chaos of the East. And standing a little 
apart, we perceived convincing signs of the long- 
promised ignition on the part of America — signs 
as yet without splendour, to be sure. These things 
have to do with the very breath we draw; they 
relate themselves to our children and to every 
conception of home — not the war itself, but the 
forming of the new social order, the message 
thrilling for utterance in the breasts of the rising 
generation. For they are the builders who are 
to follow the wreckers of war. 

Making a place to live on the lake shore, the 
development of bluff and land, the building of 
study and stable and finally the stone house (a 
pool of water in the centre, a roof open to the 
sunlight, the outer walls broken with chimneys for 
the inner fires), these are but exterior cultiva- 
tions, the establishment of a visible order that is 

[ix] 



FOREWORD 



but a symbol of the intenser activity of the natures 
within. 

Quiet, a clean heart, a fragrant fire, a press 
for garments, a bin of food, a friendly neighbour, a 
stretch of distance from the casements — these are 
sane desirable matters to gather together; but the 
fundamental of it all is, that they correspond to a 
picture of the builder's ideal. There is a bleak- 
ness about buying one's house built; in fact, a 
man cannot really possess anything unless he has 
an organised receptivity — a conception of its util- 
ities that has come from long need. A man might 
buy the most perfect violin, but it is nothing more 
than a curio to him unless he can bring out its 
wisdom. It is the same in mating with a woman 
or fathering a child. 

There is a good reason why one man keeps pigs 
and another bees, why one man plants petunias 
and another roses, why the many can get along 
with maples when elms and beeches are to be 
had, why one man will exchange a roomful of 
man-fired porcelain for one bowl of sunlit ala- 
baster. No chance anywhere. We call unto our- 
selves that which corresponds to our own key and 
tempo; and so long as we live, there is a con- 
tinual re-adjustment without, the more unerringly 
to meet the order within. 

The stone house is finished, roses have bloomed, 
but the story of the cultivation of the human spirits 
is really just beginning — a work so joyous and pro- 



FOREWORD 



ductive that I would take any pains to set forth 
with clearness the effort to develop each intrinsic 
gift, to establish a deep breathing of each mind — 
a fulness of expression on the one hand, and a 
selfless receptivity on the other. We can only 
breathe deeply when we are at peace. This is 
true mentally as well as physically, and soulfully, 
so far as one can see. The human fabric is at 
peace only when its faculties are held in rhythm 
by the task designed for them. Expression of to- 
day makes the mind ready for the inspiration of 
to-morrow. 

It may be well finally to make it clear that there 
is no personal ambition here to become identified 
with education in the accepted sense. Those who 
come bring nothing in their hands, and answer no 
call save that which they are sensitive enough to 
hear without words. Hearing that, they belong, 
indeed. Authorship is the work of Stonestudy, 
and shall always be; but first and last is the con- 
viction that literature and art are but incident to 
life ; that we are here to become masters of life — 
artists, if possible, but in any case, men. 

. . . To-day the glimpse of it all — that this is 
to be a book of the younger generation. ... I re- 
member in the zeal of a novice, how earnestly I 
planned to relate the joys of rose-culture, when 
some yellow teas came into their lovely being in 
answer to the long preparation. It seemed to me 
that a man could do little better for his quiet joy 

[xi] 



FOREWORD 



than to raise roses ; that nothing was so perfectly 
designed to keep romance perennial in his soul. 
Then the truth appeared — greater things that 
were going on here — the cultivation of young and 
living minds, minds still fluid, eager to give their 
faith and take the story of life; minds that are 
changed in an instant and lifted for all time, if 
the story is well told. ... So in the glimpse of 
this book as a whole, as it comes to-day (an East 
wind rising and the gulls blown inland) I find 
that a man may build a more substantial thing 
than a stone house, may realise an intenser culti- 
vation than even tea-roses require; and of this 
I want to tell simply and with something of order 
from the beginning. 

Will Levington Comfort. 
Stonestudy, March, 1916. 



[xii] 



CONTENTS 



PAGE 

Bees and Bloom 17 

Bluff and Shore 28 

Stonestudy 38 

Imagination 43 

Wild Geese 55 

Workmanship 65 

The Little Girl 78 

The Abbot 90 

The Valley-Road Girl 102 

Compassion 113 

The Little Girl's Work 123 

Tearing-Down Sentiment 134 

Natural Cruelty 151 

Children Change 163 

A Man's Own 171 

The Plan Is One 186 

The Irish Chapter 196 

The Bleakest Hour 202 

The New Social Order 217 

Common Clay Brick 222 

[ xiii ] 



CONTENTS 



PAGE 

The Highest of the Arts 230 

Miracles 248 

More About Order 259 

The Fresh Eye 270 

The Choice of the Many 279 

The Rose Chapter 284 

Letters 294 

The Abbot Departs 301 

The Dakotan 313 

The Dakotan {Continued) 319 

The Hill Rocks . 330 

Assembly of Parts • . . A . . 339 



[Xhr] 



CHILD AND COUNTRY 



CHILD AND COUNTRY 



BEES AND BLOOMS 



IN another place,* I have touched upon our 
first adventure in the country. It was be- 
fore the children came. We went to live in 
a good district, but there was no peace there. 
I felt forgotten, I had not the stuff to stand that. 
My life was shallow and artificial enough then 
to require the vibration of the town; and at the 
end of a few weeks it was feverishly missed. The 
soil gave me nothing. I look back upon that fact 
now with something like amazement, but I was 
young. Lights and shining surfaces were dear; 
all waste and stimulation a part of necessity, and 
that which the many rushed after seemed the 
things which a man should have. Though the air 
was dripping with fragrance and the early sum- 
mer ineffable with fruit-blossoms, the sense of self 

* Midstream, 1914, George H. Doran Co., New York. 
[17] 



CHILD AND COUNTRY 



poisoned the paradise. I disdained even to make 
a place of order of that little plot. There was 
no inner order in my heart — on the contrary, 
chaos in and out. I had not been man-handled 
enough to return with love and gratefulness to 
the old Mother. Some of us must go the full 
route of the Prodigal, even to the swine and the 
husks, before we can accept the healing of Nature. 

So deep was the imprint of this experience 
that I said for years : "The country is good, but 
it is not for me." ... I loved to read about the 
country, enjoyed hearing men talk about their 
little places, but always felt a temperamental ex- 
ile from their dahlias and gladioli and wistaria. 
I knew what would happen to me if I went again 
to the country to live, for I judged by the former 
adventure. Work would stop ; all mental activity 
would sink into a bovine rumination. 

Yet during all these years, the illusions were 
falling away. It is true that there is never an 
end to illusions, but they become more and more 
subtle to meet our equipment. I had long since 
lost my love for the roads of the many — the 
crowded roads that run so straight to pain. A 
sentence had stood up again and again before me, 
that the voice of the devil is the voice of the 
crowd. 

Though I did not yet turn back to the land, I 
had come to see prolonged city-life as one of the 
ranking menaces of the human spirit, though at 

[18] 



BEES AND BLOOMS 



our present stage of evolution it appears a neces- 
sary school for a time. Two paragraphs from 
an earlier paper on the subject suggest one of 
the larger issues : 

'The higher the moral and intellectual status 
of a people, the more essential become space, 
leisure and soul-expression for bringing children 
into the world. When evolving persons have 
reached individuality, and the elements of great- 
ness are formative within them, they pay the price 
for reversion to worldliness in the extinction of 
name. The race that produced Emerson and 
Thoreau and Whitman, that founded our culture 
and gave us a name in English, is following the 
red Indian westward off the face of the earth. 

"Trade makes the city; congestion makes for 
commonness and the death of the individual. 
Only the younger and physical races, or the rem- 
nant of that race of instinctive tradesmen which 
has failed as a spiritual experiment, can exist in 
the midst of the tendencies and conditions of met- 
ropolitan America. One of the most enthralling 
mysteries of life is that children will not come to 
highly evolved men and women who have turned 
back upon their spiritual obligations and clouded 
the vision which was their birthright." 

It is very clear to me that the Anglo-Saxons at 
least, after a generation or two of town-life, must 
give up trade and emerge from the City for the 

[19] 



CHILD AND COUNTRY 



recreating part of their year, or else suffer in 
deeper ways than death. The City will do for 
those younger-souled peoples that have not had 
their taste of its cruel order and complicating pres- 
sures; for the Mediterranean peoples already 
touched with decadence; for the strong yet sim- 
ple peasant vitalities of Northern Europe, but the 
flower of the American entity has already re- 
mained too long in the ruck of life. 

There came a Spring at last in which there was 
but one elm-tree. The rest was flat-buildings and 
asphalt and motor-puddled air. I was working 
long in those April days, while the great elm- 
tree broke into life at the window. There is 
a green all its own to the young elm-leaves, and 
that green was all our Spring. Voices of the street 
came up through it, and whispers of the wind. I 
remember one smoky moon, and there was a cer- 
tain dawn in which I loved, more strangely than 
ever, the cut-leaved profile against the grey-red 
East. The spirit of it seemed to come to me, and 
all that the elm-tree meant — hill-cabins and coun- 
try dusks, bees and blooms and stars, and the plain 
holy life of kindliness and aspiration. In this 
dawn I found myself dreaming, thirsting, wasting 
for all that the elm-tree knew — as if I were exiled 
from the very flesh that could bring the good low 
earth to my senses again. 

Could it be that something was changed within 
— that we were ready at last? One of those 

[20] 



BEES AND BLOOMS 



Spring days, in the midst of a forenoon's work, 
I stopped short with the will to go to the country 
to look for a place to rent. I left the garret, found 
Penelope, who was ready in fifteen minutes. We 
crossed the river first of all into Canada, because 
the American side within fifty miles in every di- 
rection had been sorted over again and again, by 
those who had followed just such an impulse. In 
the smaller city opposite, we learned that there 
were two suburban cars — one that would take us 
to the Lake St. Claire shore, and another that 
crossed the country to Lake Erie, travelling along 
her northern indentations for nearly ten miles. 

"We'll take the car that leaves here first," 
said I. 

It was the Erie car. In the smoking compart- 
ment I fell into conversation with a countryman 
who told me all that could possibly be synthesised 
by one mind regarding the locality we were pass- 
ing through. He suggested that we try our for- 
tune in the little town where the car first meets 
the Lake. This we did and looked up and down 
that Main Street. It was quiet and quaint, but 
something pressed home to us that was not all 
joy — the tightness of old scar- tissue in the chest. 
. . . The countryman came running to us from 
the still standing car, though this was not his des- 
tination, and pointing to a little grey man in the 
street, said: 

"He can tell you more than I can." 

[21] 



CHILD AND COUNTRY 



I regarded the new person with awe if he could 
do that. ... In a way it was true. He was a 
leisurely-minded man, who knew what he was go- 
ing to say before he spoke, had it correctly in mind. 
The product came forth edited. He called men 
by 'phone — names strange to me then that have 
become household names since- — while we sat by 
smiling and silent in his little newspaper shop. 
. . . And those who came wanted to know if we 
drank, when they talked of renting their cottages ; 
and if we were actors. 

Not that we looked like actors, but it transpired 
that actor- folk had rented one of the cottages an- 
other year, and had sat up late and had not always 
clothed themselves continually full-length. Once, 
other actor people had motored down, and it was 
said that those on the back seats of the car had 
been rigid among beer-cases. 

We were given the values and disadvantages of 
the East shore and also of the West shore, the 
town between. . . . Somehow we always turn to 
the East in our best moments and it was so this 
day. . . . We were directed to the house of a man 
who owned two little cottages just a mile from 
town. He was not well that day, but his boy 
went with us to show the cottages. That boy you 
shall be glad to know. 

We walked together down the long lane, and I 
did not seem able to reach our guide's heart, so we 
were silent, but Penelope came between us. He 

[22] 



BEES AND BLOOMS 



would have been strange, indeed, had she failed. 
... I look back now from where I sit — to that 
long lane. I love it very much for it led to the 
very edge of a willowed bluff — to the end of the 
land. Erie brimmed before us. It led to a new 
life, too. 

I had always disliked Erie — as one who lived 
in the Lake Country and chose his own. I ap- 
proved mildly of St. Claire; Michigan awed me 
from a little boy's summer; Huron was familiar 
from another summer, but Erie heretofore had 
meant only something to be crossed — something 
shallow and petulant. Here she lay in the sun- 
light, with bars of orange light darkening to ocean 
blue, and one far sparkling line in the West. Then 
I knew that I had wronged her. She seemed not 
to mind, but leisurely to wait. We faced the 
South from the bluffs, and I thought of the stars 
from this vantage. ... If a man built his house 
here, he could explain where he lived by the near- 
est map in a Japanese house, or in a Russian peas- 
ant's house, for Erie to them is as clear a name as 
Baikal or the Inland Sea is to us. I had heard 
Japanese children repeat the names of the Great 
Lakes. When you come to a shore like this you 
are at the end of the landscape. You must pause. 
Somehow I think — we are pausing still. One must 
pause to project a dream. 

. . . For weeks there, in a little rented place, 
we were so happy that we hardly ventured to speak 

[23] 



CHILD AND COUNTRY 



of it. We had expected so little, and had brought 
such weariness. Day after day unfolded in the 
very fulness of life, and the small flower-beds 
there on the stranger's land held the cosmic an- 
swer. All that summer Jupiter marked time 
across the southern heavens ; and I shall never for- 
get the sense of conquest in hiving the first swarm 
of bees. They had to be carried on a branch down 
a deep gulley, and several hundred feet beyond. 
Two-thirds of the huge cluster were in the air 
about me, before the super was lifted. Yet there 
was not a sting from the tens of thousands. We 
had the true thirst that year. Little things were 
enough ; we were innocent, even of possession, and 
brought back to the good land all the sensitizing 
that the City had given. There were days in 
which we were so happy — that another summer of 
such life would have seemed too much to ask. 

I had lived three weeks, when I remembered that 
formerly I read newspapers, and opened the near- 
est. The mystery and foreignness of it was as 
complete as the red fire of Antares that gleamed so 
balefully every night across the Lake — a hell of 
trials and jealousy and suicide, obscenity and pas- 
sion. It all came up from the sheet to my nostrils 
like the smell of blood. 

. . . There are men and women in town who 
are dying for the country; literally this is so, and 
such numbers of them that any one who lives apart 

[24] 



BEES AND BLOOMS 



from the crowds and calls forth guests from time 
to time, can find these sufferers among his little 
circle of friends. They come here for week-ends 
and freshen up like newly watered plants — turn- 
ing back with set faces early Monday morning. I 
think of a flat of celery plants that have grown to 
the end of the nourishment of their crowded space, 
and begin to yellow and wither, sick of each other. 
. . . One does not say what one thinks. It is not 
a simple thing for those whose life and work is 
altogether identified with the crowded places, to 
uproot for roomy planting in the country. But 
the fact remains, many are dying to be free. 

The City, intolerable as it is in itself — in its 
very nature against the growth of the body and 
soul of man after a certain time — is nevertheless 
the chief of those urging forces which shall bring 
us to simplicity and naturalness at the last. Man- 
hood is built quite as much by learning to avoid 
evil as by cultivating the aspiration for the good. 

Just as certainly as there are thousands suffering 
for the freedom of spaces, far advanced in a losing 
fight of vitality against the cruel tension of 
city life, there are whole races of men who have 
yet to meet and pass through this terrifying com- 
plication of the crowds, which brings a refining 
gained in no other way. All growth is a passage 
through hollows and over hills, though the jour- 
ney regarded as a whole is an ascent. 

A great leader of men who has never met the 

[25] 



CHILD AND COUNTRY 



crowds face to face is inconceivable. He must 
have fought for life in the depths and pandemoni- 
ums, to achieve that excellence of equipment 
which makes men turn to him for his word and 
his strength. We are so made that none of us can 
remain sensitive to prolonged beauty; neither can 
we endure continuously the stifling hollows be- 
tween the hills. Be very sure the year-round 
countryman does not see what you see coming 
tired and half -broken from the town; and those 
who are caught and maimed by the City cannot 
conceive their plight, as do you, returning to them 
again from the country replenished and refreshed. 

The great names of trade have been country- 
bred boys, but it is equally true that the most suc- 
cessful farmers of to-day are men who have re- 
turned to Nature from the town, some of them 
having been driven to the last ditch physically and 
commanded to return or die. It is in the turnings 
of life that we bring a fresh eye to circumstances 
and events. 

Probably in a nation of bad workmen, no work 
is so stupidly done as the farming. Great areas 
of land have merely been scratched. There are 
men within an hour's ride from here who plant 
corn in the same fields every year, and check it 
throughout in severing the lateral roots by deep 
cultivation. They and their fathers have planted 
corn, and yet they have not the remotest idea of 
what takes place in their fields during the long 

[26] 



BEES AND BLOOMS 



summer from the seedling to the full ear; and very 
rarely in the heart of the countryman is there room 
for rapture. Though they have the breadth of the 
horizon line and all the skies to breathe in, few 
men look up more seldom. 



[27] 



BLUFF AND SHORE 



THERE is no playground like a sandy 
shore — and this was sheltered from the 
north by a high clay bluff that tempered 
all voices from below and made a sound- 
ing board for the winds. The beach, however, 
was not as broad then as now. To the east for a 
mile is a shallow sickle of shore with breakers on 
the point. In itself this indentation is but a squab 
of the main Pigeon Bay, which stretches around 
for twenty miles and is formed of Pelee Point, the 
most southern extension of Canada. The nearer 
and lesser point is like a bit of the Mediterranean. 
It takes the greys of the rain-days with a beauty 
and power of its own, and the mornings flash upon 
it. I call it the Other Shore, a structure of ideal- 
ism forming upon it from much contemplation at 
the desk. The young people turn to it often from 
the classes. 

The height of land from which the Other Shore 
is best visible had merely been seen so far. from 

[«8] 



BLUFF AND SHORE 



the swimming place in front of the rented cot- 
tages. It was while in the water that I determined 
to explore. The first thing that impressed me 
when I reached the eminence was the silence. It 
was something to be dreamed of, when the Lake 
was also still. There was no road; a hay field 
came down to the very edge of the bluff, and the 
shore fifty feet below was narrow and rocky. Very 
few people passed there. That most comfortable 
little town was lying against the rear horizon to 
the West. I used to come in the evenings and 
smoke as the sun went down. Sometimes the 
beauty of it was all I could bear — the voices of 
children in the distance and the Pelee light flashing 
every seven seconds far out in the Lake. 

I first saw it in dry summer weather and did 
not know that a bumper crop of frogs had been 
harvested that Spring from the deep, grass-covered 
hollows formed by the removal of clay for a brick- 
business long ago. There was good forage on the 
mounds, which I did not appreciate at the time. 
The fact is these mounds were formed of pure dark 
loam, as fine a soil as anywhere in the Lake Coun- 
try. 

Those of the dim eyes say that once upon a time 
an orchard and brick-house stood on a bluff in 
front of the brick-yard, on a natural point, but 
that the Lake had nibbled and nibbled, finally 
digesting the property, fruit-trees, brick-house and 
all 

[29] 



CHILD AND COUNTRY 

I could well believe it when the first storm came. 
An East wind for three days brought steady del- 
uges of high water that wore down the shore-line 
almost visibly. A week later came a West wind 
that enfiladed, so that what remained of the little 
point was caught in the cross-play of the weathers. 
If some one did not intervene, the brick-yard site 
would follow the orchard — that was clear. 

. . . Three or four times the owner came to 
see me. We had rejoiced in the rented property, 
rejoiced in owning nothing, yet having it all. . . . 
Thoreau in his daily westward migrations studied 
it all with the same critical delight, and found his 
abode where others did not care to follow. We 
look twice at the spot we choose to build our 
house. That second look is not so free and inno- 
cent. . . . Yet a man may build his house. Tho- 
reau had no little brood coming up, and I have 
doubted many times, even in moments of austere 
admiration, if he wouldn't have lived longer, had 
there been a woman about to nourish him. She 
would have insisted upon a better roof, at least. 
... I told the neighbour-man I would buy the 
brick-yard, if he didn't stop pestering me about it. 
He smiled and came once too often. 

The day before, standing upon that height of 
land (not too near the edge, for it looked higher in 
those days) I had gazed across the Lake, at one 
with it all, a friendly voyager of the skies, com- 
rade of the yarrow and the daisy. I remember the 

[so] 



BLUFF AND SHORE 



long grass of the hollows, the peculiar soft bloom 
of it, and what a place it was to lie and dream, 
until one became a part of the solution of sunshine 
and tinted immensity. 

So I lost the universe for a bit of bluff on the 
Lake shore. 

When the East wind came, I saw with pro- 
prietary alarm the point wearing away. That 
which coloured the Lake was fine rose-clay and it 
was mine, bought by the foot- front. ... A man 
may build his house. 

Every one who came along told me how to save 
the point. For weeks they came. Heavy drift- 
wood was placed in times of peace, so that the sand 
would be trapped in storm. No one failed me in 
advice, but the East wind made match-wood of all 
arrangements. . . . The high water would wash 
and weaken the base, and in the heaviness of the 
rains the bulk of earth above would fall — only to 
be carried out again by the waves. The base had 
to be saved if a natural slope was ever to be se- 
cured. Farther down the shore I noted one day 
that a row of boulders placed at right angles with 
the shore had formed a small point, and that a 
clump of willows behind had retained it. This 
was a bit of advice that had not come so authori- 
tatively, but I followed the cue, and began rolling 
up rocks now like an ancient Peruvian. It was a 
little jetty, that looked like a lot of labour to a city 
man, and it remained as it was for several days. 

[31] 



CHILD AND COUNTRY 



One morning I came forth in lashing weather — 
and rubbed my eyes. The jetty was not in sight. 
It was covered with a foot of sand, and the clay 
was dry at the base. A day's work with a team 
after that in low water, snaking the big boulders 
into line with a chain — a sixty- foot jetty by sun- 
down, built on top of the baby spine I had poked 
together. No man ever spent a few dollars more 
profitably. Even these stones were covered in 
time, and there was over a yard-deep of sand but- 
tressing the base of the clay and thinning out on 
the slope of shore to the end of the stones. Later, 
when building, I took four hundred yards of sand 
from the east side of the stone jetty, and it was 
all brought back by the next storm. . . . 

I read somewhere with deep and ardent sanc- 
tion that a man isn't worth his spiritual salt if he 
lets a locality hold him, or possessions possess him ; 
and yet, the spell was broken a little when we 
came to buy. Whenever you play with the meshes 
of possession, a devil is near at hand to weave you 
in. It is true that we took only enough Lake- 
frontage for quiet, and enough depth for a per- 
manent fruit-garden — all for the price of a fifty- 
foot lot in the City ; but these things call upon one 
for a certain property-mindedness and desiring, 
in the usage of which the human mind is common 
and far from admirable. There were days in the 
thrall of stone-work and grading and drainage, in 

which I forgot the sun-path and the cloud- 

[32] 



BLUFF AND SHORE 



shadows; nights in which I saw fireplaces and 
sleeping-porches (still innocent of matter to make 
the dreams come true), instead of the immortal 
signatures of the heavens. 

But we had learned our City lessons rather well, 
and these disturbers did not continue to defile. A 
man may build his house, if he can also forget it. 
A few good things — perennials, by all means an 
elm-tree, stone-work and an oaken door ; the things 
that need not replenishing in materials, that grow 
old with you, or reach their prime after you have 
passed — these are enough. For a home that does 
not promote your naturalness, is a place of vexa- 
tion to you and to your children. 

Yet it is through this breaking of the husks of il- 
lusion — through the very artificialities that we 
come to love the sane and holy things. The man 
of great lands, who draws his livelihood from the 
soil, can never know the healing nor the tender 
loveliness that came up to us that first summer. 
One must know the maiming of the cities to 
bring to the land a surface that nature floods with 
ecstasies. Carlyle thundered against artificial 
things all his wonderful life, exalted the splen- 
dours of simplicity which permit a man to forget 
himself — just missing the fact that a man must 
be artificial before he can be natural; that we 
learn by suffering and come up through the hell 
and complication of cities only to show us wherein 
our treasure lies. 

C33 1 



CHILD AND COUNTRY 



The narrow non-sensitive consciousness of the 
peasant, with its squirrel-dream of filled barns, its 
cruelty and continual garnering — that is very far 
from the way. Tolstoi went against the eternal 
law to try that. He wanted simplicity so tragic- 
ally that he permitted his desire to prevail, and 
turned back to the peasants for it. It is against 
the law to turn back. The peasants are simple 
because they have not met the intervening com- 
plications between their inland lake consciousness 
and the oceanic clarity ahead. Be very sure that 
none will escape the complication, for we rise to 
different dimensions of simplicity through such 
trials. War, Trade, the City, and all organised 
hells are our training-fields. The tragedy is to 
remain, to remain fixed in them — not to rush forth 
at length from our miserable self -consciousness and 
self-serving in the midst of them. Cosmic simplic- 
ity is ahead; the naturalness of the deeper health 
of man — that is ahead. 

That summer is identified with the Shore. I 
worked at the desk through the long forenoons, 
and in a bathing-suit for the rest of the day. I 
expect to get to the Shore again when the last of 
the builders leave the bluff, when the bit of an 
orchard can run itself, and the big and little trees 
are at home. They are in sick-beds now from 
transplanting. From one to another I move al- 
most every day. It is not that they are on my 
land — that insensate motive is pretty well done 

[34] 



BLUFF AND SHORE 



away with. But they have been uprooted and 
moved, and they are fighting to live. I sometimes 
think that they need some one to watch. If one 
goes away for a week — there is a change, some- 
times for the worse. The sun strikes them on a dif- 
ferent side; their laterals and tap-roots have been 
severed ; they meet different conditions of soil than 
they were trained for. Much water helps, but 
they must breathe, and sometimes mulch keeps 
them too cold. Then they have their enemies like 
every other living thing — and low in health from 
moving, they cannot withstand these foes without 
help. The temporality of all things — even of 
the great imperturbable trees — is a thought of end- 
less visitation in Nature. She seems to say morn- 
ing and evening, "Do not forget that everything 
here must pass." 

There is to be little woodland, a miniature for* 
est, a hundred feet long and thirty feet wide only. 
Beech and ash and elm are started there — dog- 
woods and hawthorns and lilacs. Mulch from 
the woods is being brought, and violets. Twice I 
have tried to make young hickories live, but failed. 
I think the place where the roots are cut in trans- 
planting should be sealed with wax. A man here 
said that you can transplant hickories if you get 
all the roots, but that they bleed to death even in 
winter, if their laterals are severed. ... I want 
the birds to come to this little wood. Of course, 
it will be many years before it follows the plan, 

[35] 



CHILD AND COUNTRY 



but there is a smile in the idea. The hawthorns 
came whole; the ash and beech are doing well. 
Some wild grape is started, but that must be 
watched for it is a beautiful murderer. . . . 

I want to get back to the Shore. Something 
was met there the first summer that I yearn for 
again — close to the sand, close to the voices of the 
water. The children often tell me what I feel. 
To them the stones have their gnomes, the water 
its sprites, and the sand a spirit of healing. There, 
too, the sunlight is so intense and vitalising as it 
plays upon the water and penetrates the margin. 

The clay bluff is finding its grade, since it is 
spared the wash from beneath. That which breaks 
from erosion above straightens it out below, and 
in time it will find a permanent slope (something 
near thirty degrees, they say) that cannot be ap- 
proached for beauty by any artificial process. I 
would not miss one of the natural shelves or fis- 
sures. The Japanese are interesting in their treat- 
ment of slopes. Something of the old temples and 
stonepaved paths — a trickle of water over the 
stones, deep shadows and trailing vines — some- 
thing of all this will come to the clay bluff, if time 
is given to play on. But that is last, as the Shore 
was first. ... I brought a willow trunk there 
this Spring and let the waves submerge it in sand. 
There are fifty small shoots springing up; and 
they will fight their way with each other, the lead- 
ers surviving. I planted one cedar on the Shore. 

[36] 



BLUFF AND SHORE 



It is good to plant a cedar. You are working for 
posterity. 

The first Fall came, and nothing had been done 
above, though I had begun to have visions of a 
Spanish house there, having seen one that I could 
not forget somewhere in Luzon. A north-country 
house should have a summer heart, which is a 
fountain, and a winter heart which is a fireplace. 
I wanted both. The thought of it became clearer 
and clearer — a blend of patio and broad hearth — 
running water and red firelight — built of stone 
and decorated with ivy. A stone house with a roof 
of wired glass over a patio paved with brick; the 
area sunken slightly from the entrance ; a balcony 
stretching around to connect the sleeping rooms, 
and rimmed with a broad shelf of oak, to hold 
the palms, urns, ferns and winter plants. 

All this in a grove of elms and beeches, as I 
saw it — and as yet, there wasn't a tree on the 
place. First of all there needed to be a work-shop 
to finance the main-dream. That was built in the 
Fall, after the reverse was put on the devouring 
conditions of the Shore. 



[37] 



3 
STONESTUDY 



SOMEWHERE in the past ages, I've had 
something to do with stone-work. This 
came to me first with a poignant thrill 
when I found myself in the presence of 
the Chinese Wall. Illusion or not, it seemed as 
if there were ancient scars across my back — as if 
I had helped in that building, and under the lash, 
too. 

... I heard the mason here tell his tender that 
he had done a lot of stone-work, but had never 
been watched so closely as this. He penetrated to 
the truth of the matter presently. I wasn't watch- 
ing because I was afraid of short time or flaws of 
construction — I was watching because it satisfied 
something within, that had to do with stone-work. 
I do not get accustomed to the marvel of cement. 
The overnight bond of that heavy powder, and 
its terrible thirst, is a continual miracle to me. 
There is a satisfaction about stone-work. It is at 
its weakest at the moment of setting. If you can 

[38] 



STONESTUDY 



find a bearing for one stone upon another without 
falling, you may know that every hour that passes 
for years, your wall is hardening. These things 
move slowly, too. All that has to do with stone- 
work is a slow process. In the very lifting, the 
masons learn that muscles must not tug or jerk, 
but lift slowly. The mortar that hardens slowly 
hardens best. 

The study building happened between two long 
tasks of my own, so that there was time to be 
much outdoors. I doubt if there ever was a love- 
lier Fall than that — a full year before the thought 
of Europe became action. I watched the work — 
as the Japanese apprentices watch their craftsmen, 
so that the mind gets the picture of every process. 
The hand learns easily after this. 

It is a grand old tool, the trowel, perhaps the 
most perfect of all symbols which suggest the 
labour of man upon the earth, his making of order 
out of chaos. The hammers interested me as well 
— six, eight, and eighteen pounds. The young 
man who used them was not much to look at, his 
body sagging a bit from labour, set in his opinions 
like the matter he dealt with, but terrible in his 
holding to what he knew, and steadily increasing 
that store. I have come to respect him, for he has 
done a great deal of stone-work here since those 
Fall days, when I seemed to be learning masonry 
all over again. 

"Handle these hard-heads all day, and you're 

[39] 



CHILD AND COUNTRY 



pretty well lifted out by night," he would remark, 
and add deprecatingly, "as the feller says." 

There's a magic about the breaking. It isn't 
all strength. I think it is something the same that 
you do in billiards to get that smooth, long roll 
without smashing the balls. The mason says it is 
in the wrist. I asked him if it was the flash of the 
heat through the stone that broke it. 

"No, it's just the way you hit it," he answered. 

Two old masons worked with him for a time 
on the later work. They have built in these parts 
thousands of tons of brick and stone — fifty years 
of masonry; and their order is wonderful. I 
watched them taking their stone-hammers to the 
stable in the evening, and placing them just so. 
They have learned their mastery over the heavy 
things ; they have hewed to the Line, and built to 
the Square. Their eyes are dim but the essence of 
their being (I cannot think it otherwise) is of more 
orderly integration. There is a nobility from 
stone-work which the masons put on with the 
years — the tenders have it not; neither have any 
of the indiscriminate labour men. One must have 
a craft to achieve this. The building is not so 
much. The houses and barns and stores which the 
elder masons pass everywhere as the labour of 
their hands in this country — they are but symbols 
of the building of character within. They see into 
the stones, see through their weathered coatings. 
To another all would look the same — the blacks 

[40] 



STONESTUDY 



and reds and whites, even the amalgans — all grey- 
brown and weathered outside — but the masons 
know what is within, the colour and grain and 
beauty. 

"Try that one," I might say, looking for a cer- 
tain fire-place corner. 

"No, that's a black feller." 

"And this?" 

"Good colour, but he ain't got no grain — all 
gnurly — as the feller says." 

Sometime this mason will be able to see like 
that into the hearts of men. . . . 

A stone study sixteen by twenty-three feet, built 
about a chimney — faced stone in and out, windows 
barred for the vines, six-inch beams to hold a low 
gable roof, and a damper in the chimney ; the door 
of oak, wooden pegs to cover the screw-insets, a 
few rugs, a few books, the magic of firelight in the 
stone cave — a Mediterranean vision of curving 
shore to the East, and the single door overhang- 
ing the Lake — to the suspense of distance and 
Southern constellations. 

I laugh at this — it sounds so pompous and costly 
— but it is the shop of a poor man. The whole 
Lake-frontage, as I have told you, cost no more 
than a city lot; and with sand on the beach, and 
stone on the shore and nearby fields, it all came 
to be as cheaply as a wooden cabin — indeed, it had 
to. That winter after we had left for the City, the 
elms were put out — a few six-inch trunks, brought 

[41] 



CHILD AND COUNTRY 



with their own earth frozen to them — a specimen 
of oak, walnut, hickory (so hard to move) — but 
an elm overtone was the plan, and a clump of 
priestly pines near the stable. These are still in 
the revulsions of transition ; their beauty is yet to 
be. Time brings that, as it will smoke the beams, 
clothe the stone-work in vines, establish the roses 
and wistaria on the Southern exposure, slope and 
mellow and put the bloom over all. 

We remained until November and returned the 
following April to stay. In the meantime the 
three children — a girl of ten and two younger boys 
— had almost their final bit of public schooling, 
though I was not so sure of that then; in fact, I 
planned to have them continue their training from 
April on in the small town school until the summer 
vacation. This was tried for a few weeks, the re- 
sult of the experience hastening us toward the task 
of teaching our own. 



[42] 



4 
IMAGINATION 



MATTERS of child-education became 
really interesting to me for the first 
time that winter. There were certain 
unfoldings of the little daughter in 
our house, and I was associating a good deal with 
a group of teachers in town, some of whom while 
still professionally caught in the rigid forms of 
modern education, were decades ahead in realisa- 
tion. I recall especially a talk with one of my 
old teachers, a woman who had taught thirty years, 
given herself freely to three generations — her own 
and mine and to another since then. She had 
administered to me a thing called rhetoric in 
another age, and she looked just the same, having 
kept her mind wide open to new and challenging 
matters of literature and life and religious thought. 
I had the pleasant sense in this talk of bringing 
my doubts and ideas to her tentatively, much as I 
used to bring an essay in school days. She still 
retained a vivid impression of my faults, but the 

[43] 



CHILD AND COUNTRY 



very finest human relationships are established 
upon the knowledge of one's weaknesses — as the 
Master established His church upon the weakest 
link of the discipleship. Speaking of the children, 
I observed: 

"I find them ready, when they ask. In the old 
occult schools there is a saying that the teacher 
will always come half-way, but that the student 
must also come half-way " 

"It is soil and seed in everything," the woman 
said. "In all life, it is so. There must be a giving, 
but also a receiving. I talk to five classes a day — 
twenty-five to fifty students each — but so much 
falls upon stony ground, among tares, so much is 
snapped up by the birds " 

"When a child asks a question, he is prepared to 
receive," I repeated. "If the answer is true and 
well-designed, it will stay. The question itself 
proves that the soil is somehow ready *' 

"Yes," she said, "but one cannot sit at a desk 
and wait for questions. The teacher in dealing 
with numbers must not only plant the seed, but 
prepare the soil, too." 

"I should say that the way to do that would be 
to quicken the imagination — to challenge the imag- 
ination," I suggested. "I know it has to be done 
in writing a story. One has to pick up the reader 
and carry him away at first. And most readers are 
limp or logy in the midst of abundance." 

[44] 



IMAGINATION 



The teacher bowed gravely. Apparently she had 
come to listen. 

". . . Now, with this little girl here, there is 
but one subject that surely interests her. That has 
to do with the old Mother of us all '' 

"Nature?' 

"Yes. I've tried to find out something of what 
Nature means to her — what pictures mean Nature 
to that fresh young mind. It seems to her, Nature 
is a kind of presiding mother to all things, possibly 
something like a God-mother — to kittens and trees 
and butterflies and roses and children. She is mis- 
tress of the winds and the harvests. ... I have 
talked with her about it. Sometimes again, Nature 
is like a wonderful cabinet — shelf after shelf full 
of amazing things, finished or to be finished. I 
told her about the Sun as the Father, and Nature 
the Mother. That helped her. She held to that. 
Always now when we fall into talk naturally — it 
is about the old Mother and the brilliant Father 
who pours his strength upon all concerned — 
Mother Nature's mate." 

The teacher nodded indulgently. "That's pre- 
paring the soil. That's quickening the imagina- 
tion. But one must have imagination to do 
that " 

We fell silent. I was thinking of the old 
school days — of the handful of days in the midst 
of thousands that had left a gleam ; of the tens of 
thousands of young women now teaching in Amer- 

[45] 



CHILD AND COUNTRY 



ica without the gleam; beginning to teach at the 
most distracted period of their lives, when all 
Nature is drawing them toward mating and repro- 
duction. . . . 

"Yes, a teacher should have imagination," I 
added. "There's no way out of that, really. A 
teacher who hasn't — kills it in the child; at least, 
all the pressure of unlit teaching is a deadening 
weight upon the child's imagination. What is it 
that makes all our misery — -but the lack of imagin- 
ation*? If men could see the pictures around every- 
thing, the wonderful connecting lines about life, 
they couldn't be caught so terribly in the visible 
and the detached objects; they couldn't strangle 
and repress their real impulses and rush for things 
to hold in their hands for a little time. If they 
had imagination they would see that the things 
they hold in their hands are disintegrating now 
as everything in Nature is; that the hand itself 
weakens and loses its power. Why, here we are 
upstanding — half -gods asleep within us. Imagi- 
nation alone — the seeing of the spirit of things — 
that can awaken us." 

I felt the need of apologising at this point for 
getting on that old debatable ground — but the 
secret was out. It was the essence of my forming 
ideas on educating the children, as it is the es- 
sence of everything else — all writing, all crafts- 
manship, labour and life itself. 

". . . Half-gods asleep in a vesture," I added. 

[46] 



IMAGINATION 



"All nature and life prompting us to see that it is 
but vesture we make so much of. Children see it 
— and the world takes them in their dearest years, 
and scale by scale covers their vision. I talked 
with a man yesterday — a man I like — a good man, 
who loves his wife by the pound, believes all things 
prospering when fat — children and churches, 
purses and politicians. A big, imperial-looking 
man himself, world-trained, a man who has 
learned to cover his weaknesses and show a 
good loser on occasion ; yet, through twenty years' 
acquaintance, he has never revealed to me a ray 
other than from the visible and the obvious. He 
hunted me up because one of his children seemed 
to want to write. We talked in a club-room and 
I happened to note the big steel chandelier above 
his head. If that should fall, this creature before 
me would mainly be carrion. 

"You see what I mean. He has spent every 
energy of his life here, in building the vesture. 
That which would escape from the inert poundage 
has not been awakened. One of the queerest facts 
of all life is that these half-gods of ours must be 
awakened here in the flesh. No sooner are they 
aroused than we have imagination ; we begin to see 
the connecting lines of all things, the flashes of the 
spirit of things at once. No workman, no crafts- 
man or artisan can be significant without it. . . . 
However, as I thought of the chandelier and the 
sumptuous flesh beneath, I talked of writing — 

[47] 



CHILD AND COUNTRY 



something of what writing means to me. When I 
stopped, he said: 

" 'I didn't know you were so religious. . . . 

But about this writing matter ' and opened 

the subject again. . . . 

"He's all right. Nature will doubtless take 
care of him. Perhaps his view of life: 'I see 
what I see and take what I can,' is as much as is 
asked from the many in the great plan of things — 
but I like madness better. To me, his is fatal 
enchantment; to me, wars and all tragedies are 
better. I would rather live intensely in error than 
stolidly in things as they are. If this is a devil and 
not a half-god that sleeps within — at least, I want 
him awake. I must feel his force. If he is a 
devil, perhaps I can beat him." 

"That's something of a definition of imagina- 
tion," the teacher said, " seeing the spirit of 

things." 

"I hadn't thought of it as a definition — but it 
expresses what the real part of life means to me. 
Men and women move about life and affairs, 
knowing nine out of ten times what is going to 
happen next in their wheel of things; what their 
neighbour is going to say next, from the routine 
of the day's events. After a little of that, I have 
to run away — to a book, to a task, to an awakened 
imagination. Only those who are in a measure 
like us can liberate us. That's the key to our 
friendships, our affections and loves. We seek 

[48] 



IMAGINATION 



those who set us free — they have a cup to hold the 
vital things we have to give — a surface to receive. 
If they are in a measure our true kin — our dy- 
namics is doubled. That's the secret of affinities, 
by the way " 

The teacher smiled at me. "Tell me more 
about the little girl," she said. 

". . . She learned so quickly from the processes 
of Nature. I found her sitting in the midst of the 
young corn last summer, where the ground was 
filled with vents from the escaping moisture. I 
told her about the root systems and why cultiva- 
tion means so much to corn in dry weather. She 
read one of Henry Ward Beecher's Star Papers 
and verified many of its fine parts. She finds the 
remarkable activities in standing water. The 
Shore is ever bringing her new studies. Every 
day is Nature's. The rain is sweet; even the East 
winds bring their rigour and enticements. She 
looks every morning, as I do, at the Other Shore. 
We know the state of the air by that. And the 
air is such drink to her. You have no idea how 
full the days are." 

"You mean to make a writer of her*?" the 
teacher asked. 

"No — that was settled the first day. I asked 
the little girl what she wanted to be." 

" T want to be a mother,' she answered. 

" 'Of course,' said I, thoughtfully. ... It had 
been the same with her music. She liked it and 

[49] 



CHILD AND COUNTRY 



did well, but it never burned into her deeps — 
never aroused her productivity. And I have found 
it so with her little attempts at written expression. 
She is to be a mother — the highest of the arts. . . . 
Once we saw the terrible drama of the hornet and 
the grasshopper. I had read it in Fabre, and was 
enabled to watch it work out with some intelli- 
gence. Nature is a perfect network of processes, 
the many still to be discovered, not by human eyes 
but by intuitional vision. Finally I asked her to 
write what she thought of one of our walks to- 
gether, not trying to remember what I had said — 
only expressing something of the activity which 
my words suggested." 

The teacher nodded again. Her face had be- 
come saddened. 

"I would not encourage her to become a writer," 
I repeated. "Expression of some sort is impera- 
tive. It is the right hand. We receive with the 
left, so to speak, but we must give something of 
our own for what we receive. It is the giving that 
completes the circle ; the giving formulates, makes 
matter of vision, makes the dream come true. You 
know the tragedies of dreaming without expres- 
sion. Even insanity comes of that. I have never 
told her matters of technique in writing, and was 
amazed to find that she has something that none 
of us grown-ups have, who are formed of our fail- 
ures and drive our expression through an arsenal 
of laws and fears." 

[50] 



IMAGINATION 



"Do you mean that you instruct her in nothing 
of technique*?" 

"I haven't — at least, not yet. I have hardly 
thought of it as instruction even." 

"And spelling 4 ?" 

"Her spelling is too novel. It would not do to 
spoil that. In fact, she is learning to spell and 
punctuate quite rapidly enough from reading. 
These matters are automatic. The world has 
taught men to spell rather completely. God knows 
we've had enough of it, to the abandonment of the 
real. I could misspell a word in every paragraph 
of a three-hundred-page manuscript without detri- 
ment to the reception of the same, all that being 
corrected without charge. There are men who 
can spell, whose God-given faculties have been 
taught to spell, who have met the world with 
freshness and power, and have learned to spell. I 
have no objection to correct spelling. I would 
rather have it than not, except from children. But 
these are things which a man does with the back of 
his neck, and he who does the constructive tasks 
of the world uses different and higher organs." 

"I have taught much spelling," the teacher said 
quietly. 

"You will forgive me for being so enthusiastic. 
These things are fresh to me," I said. 

"The little girl is ten, you say*?" 

"Yes." 

"She has a fine chance," the teacher remarked 

[51] 



CHILD AND COUNTRY 



presently. "It saddens me to think of my myriads. 

But we do our best " 

"That is one sure thing," I said quickly. 
"Still you are taking her away from us." 
I felt a throb of meaning from that. I had to 
be sure she meant just as much as that throb meant 
to me. Constructive realisations come this way. 
"What do you mean — taking her away?" 
"You will make a solitary of her. She will not 
be of the world. You deal with one lovingly. It 
will become more and more a part of your work. 
Your work is of a kind to show you the way. She 
is following rapidly. I believe you have estab- 
lished the point that one can learn best from with- 
in, but one who does, must be so much alone. The 
ways will be lost between her and her generation — 
as represented by my five classes each day." 

I had done a good deal of talking, but the 
teacher had guided me straight to the crossing — 
and with very few words. I realised now that 
more and more, I was undertaking to show the 
little girl short cuts to possessions that I had found 
valuable, but for which I had been forced to go 
around, and often with difficulty. Above all, I 
was trying to keep open that dream-passage, to 
keep unclouded that lens between spirit and flesh 
through which fairies are seen and the lustrous 
connecting lines around all things. By every im- 
pulse I was arousing imagination — it is all said in 

[52] 



IMAGINATION 



that. In doing this, was I also making a "soli- 
tary" of her — lifting her apart from the many? 

There was no squirming out. I was doing 
exactly this; and if I went on, the job would be 
done more and more completely. 

"She is not strange or different now," I said, 
"but see what will happen. She will find it harder 
and harder to stay. She will begin searching for 
those who liberate her. They are hard to find — 
not to be found among the many. Books and 
nature and her dreams — but the many will not 
follow her to these sources. . . . And yet every 
man and woman I know who are great to me, 
have entered this solitude in childhood. They 
were Solitaries — that seems the mark of the quest- 
ers. . . . Why, you would not have one stay with 
the many — just to avoid the loneliness and the 
heart-pulling that leads us into ourselves. Every- 
thing done in the world that is loved and remem- 
bered — every life lived with beauty and produc- 
tiveness to the many — has come from the Soli- 
taries. Quest, that is the greatest word in Eng- 
lish. One must have imagination to set out on the 
quest. ... In reality we only search for our real 
selves — that which we yearn toward is the arous- 
ing of the half -gods within. When they are fully 
awake, we return to tell the many. Perhaps we 
do meet a more poignant suffering — but that is an 
honour " 

The teacher was smiling at me again. "Do you 

[S3] 



CHILD AND COUNTRY 



not see," she asked, "that all that you do and say 
and teach is for those who have the essential imag- 
ination?" 

"But children have it," I said. 



[54] 



5 
WILD GEESE 



I COULD not stay away entirely that winter. 
After a week or ten days of hard work, night- 
classes and furnace air — imagination would 
work to the extent that a day by the open 
fire was required. It seemed to me some days 
that I wanted a century of silence. . . . There 
was one bright cold Mid-March day, the northern 
shore still frozen a mile out. I had come forth 
from the city to smell wood-smoke, a spring symp- 
tom. It was now sunset. In the noble stillness, 
which for many moments had been broken only by 
the sagging of the dead ice, there came now a great 
cackling of geese, so that I looked up the lane a 
quarter of a mile to the nearest farmyard, wonder- 
ing who had turned loose the collie pups. It 
hadn't occurred to me to look up ; and that, when 
you come to think of it, is one of the tragedies of 
being city-bred. 

Presently I had to. Voices of wild geese carry 
with astonishing force and accuracy. A hundred 

[55] 



CHILD AND COUNTRY 



yards ahead was the long-necked gander, with the 
lines of a destroyer, his wings sweeping more 
slowly because of their strength and gear, yet he 
was making the pace. Then came his second in 
command, also alone, and as far back again, the 
point of the V. In this case, the formation was 
uneven, the left oblique being twice as extended as 
the right. . . . They were all cackling, as I imag- 
ined, because of the open water ahead, for geese 
either honk or are silent in passage. They began 
to break just above, the formation shattering piece 
by piece as they swept on with wild ardour toward 
the ice-openings. Coming up from the thrall of 
the thing, I found my hat in hand. 

It would shake any one. Indeed, there's a fine 
thrill in the flight of ducks — darting dwarfs com- 
pared to these standard-breds, whose pinions sweep 
but once to the triple-beat of the twinkling red- 
heads and canvas-backs. You can tell the differ- 
ence by the twinkle, when the distance over water 
confuses the eye as to size. Mighty twelve- 
pounders with a five- foot spread of wing, many of 
these, and with more than a suggestion of the 
swan's mystic grandeur in passing. 

Somewhere back of memory, most of us have 
strange relations with the wild things. Something 
deeper than the beauty of them thrills. Moments 
of music stir these inward animations; or steam- 
ing for the first time into certain oriental harbours. 

[56] 



WILD GEESE 



Suddenly we are estranged from the self, as we 
know it, and are greater beings. I feel as new 
as a tourist before Niagara or Montmorency, but 
as old as Paul and Silas in the presence of the 
Chinese Wall. The lips of many men, strange 
save to common sayings, are loosed to murmurings 
of deepest yearning before the spectacle of a full- 
rigged ship ; and it matters not if, within memory, 
they have ever felt the tug of filling cloth in the 
timber underfoot, or crossed even an inland water- 
way without steam. It was this that the flight of 
geese gave me — a throb from the ancient and 
perennial romance of the soul. 

Many a man goes gunning on the same prin- 
ciple, and thinks that the urge is game. It isn't 
so, unless he is a mere animated stomach; the 
many think they have come into their own as they 
go to sea, the vibration of the triple-screws singing 
along the keel. . . . They pass an iceberg or a 
derelict, some contour of tropical shore, a fishing 
fleet, or an old fore-and-after, and the steamer is 
a stifling modern metropolis after that — galley 
and stoke-hole its slums. Then and there, they 
vow some time really to go to sea. 

Sing the song of steam — the romance of steel*? 
There isn't any, yet. Generations hence, when the 
last turbine comes puffing into port, taking its 
place like a dingy collier in the midst of ether- 
driven hydroplanes — some youth on the water- 
front, perhaps, will turn his back on the crowd, 

[57] 



CHILD AND COUNTRY 

and from his own tossing emotions at sight of the 
old steamer — emotions which defy mere brain and 
scorn the upstart memory — will catch the coherent 
story of it all, and his expression will be the song 
of steam. For the pangs and passions of the Soul 
can only become articulate at the touch of some 
ancient reminder, which erects a magnificent dis- 
tance of perspective, and permits to flood in the 
stillness of that larger time, whose crises are 
epochal and whose yesterdays are lives. 

Waiting for the suburban car that night in the 
little Lake town, I mentioned the flying wedge. 

"Why, those are Jack Miner's geese," remarked 
a voice of the waiting-room. 

I ignored a reply. A local witticism past 
doubt — the cut-up of the place. Jack Miner, as 
I saw it, might own Pelee Island, Lake Erie or the 
District of Columbia, but no man's pronoun of pos- 
session has any business relation to a flock of wild 
geese, the same being about the wildest things we 
have left. I recalled the crippled goose which the 
farmer's boy chased around a hay-stack for the 
better part of a June afternoon, and only saw 
once ; the goose being detained that particular once 
with the dog of the establishment. This dog 
ranged the countryside for many years thereafter, 
but couldn't be coaxed past a load of hay, and 
was even sceptical of corn-shocks. I knew, more- 
over, that the geese are shot at from the Gulf rice- 

[58] 



WILD GEESE 



marshes to the icy Labradors ; that they fly slightly 
higher since the common use of smokeless instead 
of black powder. 

Yet the stranger hadn't been humorous. Any 
of his fellow townsmen would have made the same 
remark. In fact, I had the good fortune a few 
weeks afterward to see several hundred wild geese 
playing and feeding on Jack Miner's farm — 
within a hundred feet of his doorstep, many of 
them. 

Years ago, a winter came on to stay before the 
corn was all in — a patch of corn on a remote back- 
field of Jack Miner's farm. A small flock of geese 
flying North in March, knew as much about the 
loss as Jack did. A farm-hand was first to note 
their call, and got such a case of wanderlust when 
he observed the geese that he kept on going with- 
out return to the house. He wrote, however, this 
significant news : 

"Jack: Wild guse on your pleace. Leve corn 
on wood-lot. He come back mabe. Steve." 

Jack Miner did just that; and the next year he 
left the corn a little nearer the house and so on. 
Meanwhile he made a law that you couldn't come 
onto his place with a shotgun. He couldn't stop 
the townspeople from taking a shot at the small 
flocks as they passed over, from the farm feeding 
ground to the Lake, but the geese didn't seem to 
expect that of Jack. He says they would miss it, 
if the shooting stopped, and get stale; and then it 

[59] 



CHILD AND COUNTRY 



does a similar lot for the town in the critical month 
of April. 

Finally Jack built a large concrete pond on his 
house acres, leaving much corn on the clean 
marges. He has a strong heart to wait with. The 
geese "had him" when he first carried forth the 
corn, but it was a year or two afterward before a 
daring young gander and pair made a hasty drop. 
For once there was no chorus of "I-told-you-so's," 
from the wiser heads cocked stiff as cattails from 
the low growth of the surrounding fields. That 
was the second beginning. 

The system has been cumulative ever since, and 
in something like this order: fifteen, forty, one 
hundred and fifty, four hundred, six hundred — in 
five years. The geese never land all at once in the 
artificial pond — some watching as far back as from 
the remote wood-lot, others in the south fields 
across the road. Jack Miner feeds five bushels of 
corn a day and would like to feed fifteen. 

"A rich man can afford a few geese," he re- 
marked, "but it takes a poor man to feed six hun- 
dred." 

He asked the Canadian Government for one 
hundred dollars the year to help feed the geese, 
but the formidable process entailed to get it evi- 
dently dismayed Ottawa at the outset, for it didn't 
go through. An automobile magnate came over 
from the States recently. The substance of his 
call didn't leak out. In any event, Jack Miner 

[60] 



WILD GEESE 

is still managing his brick-kiln. Bird-fanciers come 
nowadays in season from all over the States and 
Provinces, and Jack feeds them too. Meantime, 
we Lake, folk who come early enough to the Shore 
to see theunspiring flocks flying overland to the 
water in 'the, beginnings of dusk, and hear them 
out on the Lake where they moor at night, a bed- 
time music that makes for strange dreaming — we 
know well what kind of a gift to the community 
Jack Miner is; and we are almost as sorry as he, 
when the keen, hardy Norse blood of the birds 
calls them forth from the May balm. 

Of course, Jack is an individual. He has time 
to plant roses as well as corn. At luncheon to-day, 
there was an armful of red roses on the table from 
Jack Miner's. He had sent them three miles in 
hay time, and didn't know that I had spent the 
morning in writing about his geese. He has time 
to tempt thousands of smaller birds to his acreage. 
It's one seething bird-song there. Besides, he 
makes a fine brick. You'd expect him to be a 
workman. . . . But the wild geese are a part of 
his soul. 

"I've watched them for a good many years 
now," he told me. "I've seen them tackle a man, a 
bull, a team, and stand against the swoop of an 
eagle. Two ganders may be hard as swordsmen at 
each other, when they're drawing off their flocks, 
but they'll stand back to back against any outsider. 
Yes, I've watched them a long time, and I've 

[61] 



CHILD AND COUNTRY 



never yet seen them do anything a man would be 
ashamed of. Why, I'd like to see the wild goose 
on the back of the Canadian flag!" 

I wondered if Canada were worthy, but didn't 
say so. 

It is rather too fine an event to go often to Jack 
Miner's. The deeper impressions are those which 
count, and such are spontaneous. They do not 
come at call. One feels as if breaking into one of 
the natural mysteries — at first glimpse of the huge 
geese so near at hand — a spectacle of beauty and 
speed not to be forgotten. They are built long 
and clean. Unlike the larger fliers as a whole, 
they need little or no run to rise; it is enough to 
say that they rise from the water. You can cal- 
culate from that the marvellous strength of pinion. 
And they are continental wing-rangers that know 
the little roads of men, as they know the great 
lakes and waterways and mountain chains — Jack 
Miner's door-yard and Hudson's Bay. 

"I'd give a lot to see one right close, Jack," 
said I. 

"You don't have to. Come on." 

He took me to a little enclosure where a one- 
winged gander was held. 

"He came home to me with a wing broken one 
Sunday," said Jack. "It was heavy going, but he 
managed to get here. I thought at first we'd have 
some goose, but we didn't. The fact is, I was sort 
of proud that he came home in his trouble. I took 

[62] 



WILD GEESE 

the wing off, as you see. He's doing fine, but he 
tried to drink himself to death, as they all do. 
That appears to be the way they fix a broken 
wing. It may be the fever or the pain; anyway, 
they'll drink until they die. I kept this fellow 
dry, until he healed." 

The splendid gamester stretched out his black 
head and hissed at me — something liquid and ven- 
omous in the sound — the long black beak as fine 
and polished as a case for a girl's penknife. He 
was game to the core and wild as ever. . . . 
Jack hadn't let him die — perhaps he felt out of the 
law because of that. 

"I'll go and do my chores," Jack Miner said. 
"You can stay and think it out." 

I knew from that how well he understood the 
same big thing out of the past which the wild bird 
meant to me. He had the excellent delicacy which 
comes from experience, to leave me there alone. 

An hysterical gabble broke the contemplation. 
Waddling up from behind was a tame goose. The 
shocking thing was too fat and slow to keep itself 
clean — its head snubbed, its voice crazily pitched, 
its wings gone back to a rudiment, its huge food- 
apparatus sagging to the ground, straining to lay 
itself against the earth, like a billiard-ball in a 
stocking full of feathers. 

And before me was the Magnificent, one that 
had made his continental flights, fasting for them, 
as saints fast in aspiration — lean and long, power- 

[68] 



CHILD AND COUNTRY 



ful and fine in brain and beak and wing — an ad- 
mirable adversary, an antagonist worthy of eagles, 
ready for death rather than for captivity. . . . 
All that Gibbon ever wrote stood between this 
game bird and its obscene relative dragging its 
liver about a barnyard — the rise and fall of the 
Roman, and every other human and natural, em- 
pire — the rise by toil and penury and aspiration, 
and the fall to earth again in the mocking ruins of 
plenty. . . . 

Good Jack Miner expressed the same, but in 
his own way, when he came back from the chores. 



[64] 



WORKMANSHIP 



AS related, I had seen the Lake-front prop- 
erty first in August. The hollows were 
idealised into sunken gardens, while the 
mason was building the stone study. 
We returned in April — and the bluff was like a 
string of lakes. The garden in the rear had been 
ploughed wrong. Rows of asparagus were lanes 
of still water, the roots cut off from their supply of 
air. Moreover, the frogs commented in concert 
upon our comings and goings. ... I set about 
the salvage alone, and as I worked thoughts came. 
Do you know the suction of clay — the weight of 
adhering clay to a shovel^ You can lift a stone 
and drop it, but the substance goes out of a city 
man's nerve when he lifts a shovel of clay and 
finds it united in a stubborn bond with the imple- 
ment. I went back to the typewriter, and tried 
to keep up with the gang of ditchers who came 
and tiled the entire piece. It was like healing the 
sick to see the water go off, but a bad day for the 

[65] 



CHILD AND COUNTRY 



frogs in the ponds where the bricks had been made. 

"You'll be surprised at the change in the land 
which this tiling will make in one season," the boss 
told me. "It will turn over next corn-planting 
time like a heap of ashes." 

That's the general remark. Good land turns 
over like a heap of ashes. 

I would hardly dare to tell how I enjoyed work- 
ing in that silent cave of red firelight. Matters 
of craftsmanship were continually in my thoughts 
— especially the need in every human heart of 
producing something. Before the zest is utterly 
drained by popular din from that word "effi- 
ciency," be reminded that the good old word orig- 
inally had to do with workmanship and not with 
dollar-piling. . . . The world is crowded with 
bad workmen. Much of its misery and cruelty is 
the result of bad workmanship, which in its turn 
results from the lack of imagination. A man 
builds his character in his work ; through character 
alone is the stamina furnished to withstand with 
dignity the heavy pressures of life. 

... I arranged with a neighbour to do some 
work for me. In fact he asked for the work, and 
promised to come the next Tuesday. He did not 
appear. Toward the end of the week following 
I passed him in the lane that leads down to the 
Lake — a tall, tired man, sitting beside a huge 
stone, his back against a Lombard poplar, a shot- 
gun across his knees. 

[66] 



WORKMANSHIP 



"I thought I'd wait here, and see if I couldn't 
hit one of them geese," he explained, as I came 
up. 

It seemed I had never seen such a tired face. 
His eyes were burning like the eyes of a sentry, 
long unrelieved, at the outpost of a city. . . . The 
geese ride at mooring out in the Lake at night. I 
have fallen asleep listening to their talk far out 
in the dark. But I have never seen them fly over- 
land before sunset, which was two hours away at 
the time I passed up the lane. I do not know how 
long Monte had been sitting there. 

Now except for the triviality of the promise, I 
had no objection to his not working for me, and 
no objection to his feeding his family, thus first- 
handed, though very little breast of the game wild 
goose comes to the board of such as he. ... I was 
on the way to the forge of a workman. I wanted 
a knocker for an oaken door; and I wanted it just 
so. Moreover, I knew the man who would make 
it for me. 

At the head of the lane, still on the way, I met 
a farmer, who had not missed the figure propped 
between the stone and the poplar tree. He said 
that the last time Monte had borrowed his gun, 
he had brought it back fouled. That was all he 
said. 

I passed Monte's house, which is the shocking 
depression of a prosperous community. There 
were many children — a stilled and staring lot. 

[67] 



CHILD AND COUNTRY 

They sat in dust upon the ground. They were 
not waiting for goose. Their father had never 
inspired them with expectancy of any sort; their 
mother would have spoiled a goose, had it been 
brought by a neighbour. She came to the door as 
I passed, spilled kitchen refuse over the edge of 
the door-stone, and vanished. The children 
seemed waiting for death. The virtue of father- 
hood is not to be measured numerically. . . . 
April was nearly over, but the unsightly heaps that 
the snows had covered were not yet cleared away. 
Humped, they were, among the children. This is 
a world-old picture — one that need not be finished. 

Monte was not a good shot, not a good work- 
man, not a good father — a burden and bad odour 
everywhere, a tainter of the town and the blood of 
the human race. That, which was gathered about 
him was as pitifully bred as reared. Monte's one 
value lay in his horrible exemplarship. He was 
a complete slum microcosm, without which no civ- 
ilisation has yet arrived. Monte has given me more 
to think about than any of the happier people. In 
his own mute way, he reminds each man of the 
depths, furnishes the low mark of the human 
sweep, and keeps us from forgetting the world as 
it is, the myriads of bad workmen of which the 
leaning cities are made. 

Sitting there by the rock, letting the hours go 
by — and in his own weak heart, my neighbour 
knew that he wouldn't "hit one of them geese." 

[68] 



WORKMANSHIP 



All his life he had failed. Nature had long since 
ceased trying to tempt him into real production. 
Even his series of natural accidents was doubtless 
exhausted. That is the pace that kills — that sit- 
ting. 

I went on to the forge of the workman. We 
talked together. I sat by while he made the thing 
I wanted, which was not an ornament simply. He 
will always be identified there in the oak, an ex- 
cellent influence; just as I think of him when I 
save the wood in the open fireplace, because of the 
perfect damper he made for the stone chimney. 
Monte was still there when I went back. The 
problem of him returned to mind after the fresh- 
ening of the forge. 

He belongs to us as a people, and we have 
not done well by him. We did not help him to 
find his work. We did not consider his slowness, 
nor the weariness of his flesh, the sickness he came 
with, nor the impoverishment of his line. We are 
not finding their work for his children. We have 
sent them home from school because they were not 
clean. We complain that they waste what we 
give them; that they are harder on the shoes we 
furnish, than are our own children. We do not 
inquire with wisdom into their life, to learn on 
which side of the human meridian they stand — 
whether their disease is decadence and senility 
of spiritual life, or whether their spines are but 
freshly lifted from the animal levels. 

[69] 



CHILD AND COUNTRY 



As a purely physical aggregate — if our civilisa- 
tion be that — our business is quickly to extermin- 
ate Monte and his whole breed. He embarrasses 
us, as sleeker individuals of the herd and hive. He 
is tolerated to the diseases with which he infects 
us, because we have weakened our resistance with 
cleanliness. But by the authority of our better 
understanding, by our sacred writings and the in- 
tuitions of our souls, we are men and no longer an 
animal aggregate. As men, our business is to lift 
Monte from his lowly condition, and hold him 
there ; to make him and his children well first, and 
then to make workmen of them. There are work' 
men in the world for this very task of lifting 
Monte and his brood. We do not use them, be- 
cause the national instinct of Fatherhood is not yet 
profoundly developed. We are not yet brothers. 

In the recent winter months in the city it came 
to me that I had certain things to tell a group 
of young men. The class was arranged. In the 
beginning I warned them not to expect literary 
matters; that I meant to offer no plan to reach the 
short-story markets (a game always rather deep 
for me) ; that the things which I wanted to tell 
were those which had helped me toward being a 
man, not an artist. Fifteen young men were gath- 
ered — all strangers to me. When we were really 
acquainted, weeks afterward, I discovered that 
seven of the fifteen had been writing for months 

[70] 



WORKMANSHIP 



or years — that there was certain stuff in the seven 
that would write or die. 

They had not come for what I meant to give. 
As a whole they were indifferent at first to my idea 
of the inner life. They had come for the glean- 
ings I would drop, because I could not help it, hav- 
ing spent twenty years learning how to learn to 
write. The name that had called them from the 
different parts of the city was identified for good 
or bad in their minds with the work they meant 
to do. And what I did for them was done as a 
workman — that was my authority — a workman, a 
little older, a little farther along in the craft that 
called. 

And to every workman there are eager appren- 
tices, who hunger to know, not his way, but the 
way. Every workman who does the best he can, 
has a store of value for the younger ones, who are 
drawn, they know not why, to the production he 
represents. Moreover, the workman would learn 
more than he could give, but he is not called. He 
seldom offers himself, because the laugh of the 
world has already maimed him deeply. ... I 
had told them austerely what I would do for them, 
and what I would not do ; but I did more and more 
what they really asked, for therein and not else- 
where I had a certain authority. More and more 
accurately I learned to furnish what they came for. 
All my work in the study alone was to do just that 
for a larger class, and in this effort I stumbled 

[71] 



CHILD AND COUNTRY 



upon the very heart of the fatherhood ideal and 
the educational ideal — for they are one and the 
same. 

A man is at his best in those periods in which 
self-interest is lost to him. The work in which a 
man can lose the sense of self for the most hours 
each day — that is his especial task. When the 
workman gives forth the best that is in him, not 
feeling his body, above all its passions and petty 
devices for ruling him, concentrated upon the task, 
a pure instrument of his task and open to all in- 
spiration regarding it — that man is safe and su- 
perb. There is something holy in the crafts and 
arts. It is not an accident that a painting lives 
three hundred years. We are not permitted to for- 
get the great potters, the great metallists, the rug 
and tapestry makers. They put themselves in 
their tasks, and we are very long in coming to the 
end of their fineness. 

They produced. They made their dreams come 
true in matter; and that is exactly what our im- 
mortal selves are given flesh to perform. Each 
workman finds in his own way the secret of the 
force he represents. He is an illuminated soul in 
this discovery. It comes only to a man when he 
is giving forth, when he is in love, having lost the 
love of self. Giving forth purely the best of self, 
as the great workmen do, a man is on the highway 
to the divine vocation which is the love and service 

of humanity. 

[72] 



WORKMANSHIP 



. . . They begin to call him twenty minutes 
before dinner is ready. He is caught in the dream 
of the thing and has little time to bargain for it. 
He feels for his glasses, when you call him forth; 
he sweats; he listens to the forge that calls him. 
The unfinished thing is not only on his bench, 
but in his mind — in its weakness, half-born and 
uncouth. . . . "Talk to my daughter. She knows 
about these things," he says. "I must go. . . . 
Yes, it is a fine day." 

It is raining like as not. . . . And because the 
world has laughed at him so long, he has forgotten 
how to tell his story by the time he has perfected 
his task. The world laughs at its betters with the 
same facility that it laughs at the half-men. Our 
national and municipal fathers should teach us 
first that the man who has found his work is one 
of the kings of the earth. Children should be 
taught to know a workman anywhere. All excel- 
lence in human affairs should be judged by the 
workmanship and not by the profits. 

We are neighbourhoods in name only. How 
often has our scorn for some strange little man 
changed to excited appreciation, when the world 
came at last to his shop with its sanctions of money 
and noisy affairs. He is nervous and ill at ease. 
His world has ceased to laugh. He wonders at 
that; asks himself if this praise and show is not 
a new kind of laughter, for he cannot forget the 
grinding and the rending of the early years — when 

[73] 



CHILD AND COUNTRY 



there were days in which he doubted even his 
work. Perhaps his has been a divided house all 
these years; it may be that he has lost even Her for 
his work. 

The world has left him richer, but he is not 
changed, and back to the shop again. A man's 
work lives with him to the end — and beyond — 
that is the eternal reason of its importance. . . . 
All quandaries cease; all doubts sink into the 
silence; the task assumes once more; his real life 
is awake; the heart of reality throbs for him, ad- 
justing the workman to an identity which cannot 
grow old. 

He may not know this miracle of fine work- 
manship. This that has come to him from the 
years of truth, may not be a possible expression 
from his lips, but he knows in his heart one of the 
highest truths of here below : That nothing which 
the world can give is payment for fine workman- 
ship; that the world is never so vulgar as when it 
thinks it can pay in money for a life's task. The 
workman can only be paid in kind. 

It is not the product that men use that holds 
the immortal result. They may come to his shop 
fifty years after he has left it ; they may cross seas 
and continents to reach this shop, saying: "This 
is where he did it. His bench was just there — his 
house over yonder. Here is where he stood, and 
there he hung his coat." But these are only refine- 
ments of irony. . . . They may say, "This is his 

[74] 



WORKMANSHIP 



grandson." But that will only handicap or ruin 
the child, if he find not his work. A thousand 
lesser workmen may improve his product, lighten 
it, accelerate its potency, adapt it to freight rates 
— but that is no concern of the dream. 

The payment of it all, the glory of it all, is 
that the real workman finds himself. His soul 
has awakened. In the trance of his task, he has 
lost the love of self which the world knows, and 
found the blessedness of the source of his being. 
He does not need to state it philosophically, for he 
lived it. He found the secret of blessedness, if 
not of happiness. At his bench, he integrated the 
life that lasts. He could have told you in the 
early years, if the world had not laughed. He 
would have learned himself more swiftly, had he 
been encouraged to tell, as he toiled — if the world 
had not shamed away the few who were drawn to 
his bench. 

But alone, he got it all at last — the passion and 
power of the spiritual workman which sustains 
him now, though his body has lain under the hill 
for fifty years. His shop is the place of a greater 
transaction than his task. The breadth and essence 
of it that lingers makes it a sacred place to the 
few who would take off their shoes to enter — 
were it not for the misunderstanding of the world. 

Out of the artificial he became natural; out of 
the workman, he emerged a man, a living soul. 

I would support every plan or dream of educa- 

[75] 



CHILD AND COUNTRY 



tion, and none other, that seeks to find for the 
youth his life work. I would call upon every 
workman personally to help; and urge for every 
community, the goodness of its products and not 
the richness of its markets. I would put the 
world's premium upon fine workmanship of the 
hand or brain or spirit; and a stiff pressure upon 
the multiplication of these products by mechanical 
means, for we have too many common things, and 
so few fine things. I would inculcate in the educa- 
tional ideal, first of all, that in every man there is 
a dream, just as there is a soul, and that to express 
the dream of the soul in matter is the perfect in- 
dividual performance. I would impress upon the 
youth that in all arts and crafts, the dream fades 
and the spirit of the product dies away, when 
many are made in the original likeness. Nature 
does not make duplicates ; her creative hall-mark is 
upon every leaf and bee; upon every cliff and 
cloud and star. 

I would not endow the young workman while 
he is learning his trade or art; but I would have 
the State intensely watchful of him, and impas- 
sioned with parental conviction that her greatness 
is inseparable with his possibilities of achievement. 
I would not make his ways short, but despise and 
crush all evidences of facility. I would keep him 
plain and lean and fit, and make him earn his 
peace. All fine work comes from the cultivation 
of the self, not from cultivated environment. . . . 

[76] 



WORKMANSHIP 



I dreamed for twenty years of a silent room and 
an open wood fire. I shall never cease to wonder 
at the marvel of it, now that it has come. It is 
so to-night alone in the stillness. The years of 
struggle to produce in the midst of din and dis- 
traction, while they wore as much as the work 
itself, were helpful to bring the concentration 
which every decent task demands ; and in the thrill 
of which a man grows in reality, and not other- 
wise. 



[77] 



THE LITTLE GIRL 



IT was determined that the children should 
try the country-town school that Spring from 
April to June. This school was said to be 
of exceptional quality, and I talked with the 
master, a good man. In fact, there was none but 
the general causes for criticism in this establish- 
ment — the same things I found amiss in city 
schools. The children accepted the situation with 
a philosophy of obedience which should have 
taught the race many things it does not yet know. 
The journey was considerable for them twice daily 
in warming weather ; and from little things I heard 
from time to time, words dropped with no idea of 
rebellion, I was reminded of the dark drama of my 
own "Education," written explicitly enough else- 
where and which I am glad to forget. 

The schools of to-day are better, no doubt about 
that, but the improvement is much in the way of 
facility and convenience; the systems are not struc- 
turally changed — facility and convenience, speed 

[78] 



THE LITTLE GIRL 



of transit, mental short-cuts, the science of mak- 
ing things not more plain, but more obvious, the 
science of covering ground. . . . 

I read a book recently written by a woman who 
mothered an intellectual child of cormorant appe- 
tite. That child learned everything in sight from 
fairies to grease-traps. What was difficult to man- 
age in that mass of whipcord mental fibre, was 
put into verse and sung. The book told how the 
child was nourished on all things that only special- 
ists among men cared to litter their minds with. 
Then there was a supplement of additional assimi- 
lations, and how to get them in. With all this, the 
child had been taught to dance; and there was a 
greed of learning about it (the book being de- 
signed to show the way to others) that struck me 
as avarice of the most violent and perverse form ; 
the avarice of men for money and baronial hold- 
ings being innocent compared, as sins of the flesh 
are innocent compared to the sins of mind. This 
book and the tragic child form to my idea one of 
the final eruptions of the ancient and the obscene. 

The word education as applied in this woman's 
book, and through the long past of the race, repre- 
sents a diagram of action with three items : 

One, the teacher; 2, the book; 3, the child. 
Teacher extracting fact from book and inserting 
same in child's brain equals education. 

I suffered ten years of this, entering aged six, 
and leaving the passage aged sixteen, a cruel young 

[79] 



CHILD AND COUNTRY 



monster filled with rebellion and immorality, 
not educated at all, but full of the sense of vague 
failures, having in common with those of my 
years, all the levels of puerile understanding, stung 
with patronage and competitive strife, designed to 
smother that which was real in the heart. 

Very securely the prison-house had closed upon 
me, but please be very sure that I am not blaming 
teachers. Many of them met life as it appeared, 
and made the best of conditions. There were true 
teachers among them, women especially who 
would have ascended to genius in their calling, 
had they been born free and in a brighter age. 
They were called upon, as now, to dissipate their 
values in large classes of children, having time to 
see none clearly, and the powers above dealt them 
out the loaf that was to be cut. The good teacher 
in my day was the one who cut the loaf evenly — 
to every one his equal part. The first crime was 
favoritism. . . . 

I sat here recently with a little class of six 
young people ranging in age from eleven to 
twenty. Side by side were a girl of seventeen and 
a boy of fourteen, who required from me handling 
of a nature diametrically opposite. The ap- 
proaches to their hearts were on opposite sides of 
the mountain. Yet they had been coming for 
three months before I acutely sensed this. The 
girl had done very well in school. She was known 
to be bright; and yet, I found her all caught in 

[80] 



THE LITTLE GIRL 



rigidities of the brain, tightly corseted in mental 
forms of the accepted order. Her production was 
painfully designed to meet the requirements of her 
time and place ; the true production of her nature 
was not only incapable of finding expression, but 
it was not even in a state of healthful quiesence. 
It was pent, it was dying of confinement, it was 
breathing with only a tithe of its tissue. 

The wonderful thing about youth is that it an- 
swers. 

The boy next had not done well in school. The 
word dreamer was designated to the very thought 
of him. Yet this boy had awed me — the mute 
might of him. One day I talked for fifteen min- 
utes and abruptly told him to bring in the next 
day, written, what had struck him, if anything, 
in what I had said. He brought me in two thou- 
sand words of almost phenomenal reproduction — 
and yet he had listened sleepily. Of course, I did 
not care to develop his reportorial instinct after 
this display. My work was to develop his brain 
to express the splendid inner voltage of the boy, 
just as certainly as I had found it necessary to 
repress the brain and endeavour to free the spirit 
of the girl. I will come to this individual study 
again. It is my point here merely to show how 
helpless even great vision must be to the needs of 
the individual, in classes of youths and children 
ranging as they do in crowded schools. 

[81] 



CHILD AND COUNTRY 



I had been one who thought my own work most 
important — to the exclusion even of the rights of 
others. For instance when the Old Man (as he is 
affectionately designated) went to the Study, he 
was not to be disturbed. All matters of domestic 
order or otherwise must be carried on without him 
in these possessed and initialed hours. After din- 
ner the Old Man had to read and rest; later in 
the afternoon, there was the Ride and the Garden, 
and in the evening, letters and possibly more pro- 
duction. At meal-time he was available, but fre- 
quently in the tension of food and things to do. 
... As I see it now, there was a tension every- 
where—tension wherever the Old Man appeared, 
straining and torturing his own tasks, had he only 
known it. 

The little girl dared to tread where the older 
ones had been so well-taught to hold back. One 
of the first vacation mornings she joined him on 
the path to the Study and lured him down to the 
beach. It was the time of day for the first smoke, 
the smoke of all. Now the Old Man was accus- 
tomed to enter the Study, sweep the hearth with 
his own hands, regard the bow of shore-line from 
the East window — the Other Shore — for a mo- 
ment; scrutinise the copy of the day or night be- 
fore, for the continuity of the present day, light 
the pipe and await the impulse of production. 
Many years of work had ordained this order; 
many hard lessons resulting from breaking the 

I 82 ] 



THE LITTLE GIRL 



point of the day's work before sitting down to it; 
many days that had been spoiled by a bite too 
much breakfast, or by a distraction at the critical 
moment. 

However, the Old Man was down on the beach 
with a little girl of ten who wanted to talk. She 
wanted to know about the shells and waves, what 
ridged the sand, and what the deep part of the 
Lake was paved with. The answers were judi- 
cious. Presently he was talking about things 
nearer the front of mind, about the moon and tides, 
the tides of the sea, in this Lake, in teacups, in the 
veins of plants and human blood — the backward 
and forward movement of everything, the ebb and 
flow everywhere — in short, the Old Man was dis- 
cussing the very biggest morsel of all life — vibra- 
tion. He arose and started up the bank. 

"Don't go yet," the little girl called. 

"Wait," said he. "I'm coming back. I want 
to get my pipe." 

There was a mist in the morning, and the big 
stone where she sat was still cool from the night 
before. The South Wind which has a sweetness 
of its own was just ruffling the Lake; there had 
been rain, and it was Summer. The smell of the 
land was there — the perfume of the Old Mother 
herself which is the perfume of the tea-rose — the 
blend of all that springs into being. 

"Sometimes you catch her as she is," the Old 
Man said. "Now to-day she smells like a tea- 

[83] 



CHILD AND COUNTRY 



rose. I don't mean the smell of any particular 
plant, but the breath of all — as if old Mother 
Nature were to pass, and you winded the beauty 
of her garments. At night, sometimes she smells 
like mignonette — not like mignonette when you 
hold it close to your face, but when the wind 
brings it." 

He found this very interesting to himself, be- 
cause he had not thought about it just so. He 
found also that a man is dependent for the quality 
of his product upon the nature of his listener, just 
as much as the seed is dependent upon the soil. It 
is true a man can go on producing for years in the 
quiet without talking to any one, but he doubles 
on his faults, and loses more and more the wide 
freedom of his passages. Here was a wrinkled 
forehead to warn one that the expression wasn't 
coming clearly, or when the tension returned. The 
Other Shore was faintly glorified in her morning 
veil. 

"We'll go back to the Study and write some of 
these things we've seen and talked about," the Old 
Man said at length. "You see they're not yours 
until you express them. And the things you ex- 
press, as I expressed them, are not yours either. 
What you want to express is the things you get 
from all this. The value of that is that no one 
else can do it." 

She went willingly, sat in a corner of the Study. 

The Old Man forgot her in a moment. 

[84] 



THE LITTLE GIRL 



That was the real beginning. 

Presently she came every morning. . . . I (to 
return to first person again) had been led to be- 
lieve that any outside influence in a man's Study 
is a distraction; not alone the necessary noise and 
movement of the other, but the counter system of 
thinking. I perceived little difference, however. 
I had no fewer good mornings than formerly; and 
yet, any heavy or critical attitudes of mind would 
have been a steady and intolerable burden. In 
fact, I believe that there was a lift in her happi- 
ness and naturalness. It came to me so often that 
she belonged there. 

She remained herself absolutely. She had 
never been patronised. Recently with six young 
people in the Study, I suddenly thought of the 
relation of teacher to student in a finer light. I 
was impelled to say to them: 

"I do not regard you from any height. You are 
not to think of yourselves as below. It might 
happen that in a few years — this relation might 
be changed entirely even by the youngest of you. 
The difference between us now is merely a matter 
of a decade or two. You have more recently come 
in; things are strange to you. Intrinsically you 
may be far greater than I, but we do not deal with 
comparisons. We are friends; we are all one. I 
sit in the midst of you — telling you from day to 
day of the things I have learned about this place, 
having come here with an earlier caravan. My first 

[85] 



CHILD AND COUNTRY 



years here were of rapid learning, as yours will be. 
Presently the doors will shut upon my new impres- 
sions, but you will go on. When you reach your 
best, you may smile at your childish fancies of 
how much I knew. You will always be kind in 
your thoughts of these early days, for that is the 
deep law of good men and women; indeed one 
must reverence one's teacher, for the teacher is the 
symbol of Nature, of Mother, of Giving. But 
there must be equality first. My brain is somehow 
filled now ; the time will come when yours is more 
filled than mine with the immediate matters of our 
life. For children become old, and the old become 
children, if their days are happy. After all, the 
immediate matters of our present life are of aston- 
ishingly small account, in relation to the long 
life — the importance only of one bead on the end- 
less string. So I would have you know that the 
differences between us that have to do with this 
single life-adventure are of very slight moment — 
that we really are the sum of innumerable adven- 
tures, the lessons of which form us, and only a lit- 
tle of which we have yet learned to tell." 

I had something of this attitude when the little 
girl came alone, and I believe it to be important. 
A sense of it in the teacher's mind (and the more 
one thinks of it, the less it appears an affectation) 
will help to bring about that equality between the 
young and the old which the recent generations did 

[86] 



THE LITTLE GIRL 



not possess, and from the absence of which much 
deformity and sorrow has come to be. 

The little girl could quickly understand from 
the rapt moments of her own production, how dis- 
ordering a thing it is to bring foreign matter to 
one's mental solution in an abrupt fashion. She 
saw that the organisation of ideas for expression is 
a delicate process; that it never occurs twice the 
same, and that the genuine coherence is apt to 
be at its best in the first trial, for one of the es- 
sences of the rapture of production is the novelty 
of the new relation. There were times in the fore- 
noons when I met halting stages and was ready 
possibly to banter a moment. I very quickly en- 
countered a repulse, if she were in the thrall. She 
would wave her hand palm outward before her 
face — a mistake of meaning impossible. 

Now she had only learned to write two years 
before, this detail purposely postponed. I did 
not undertake to correct spelling, permitting her to 
spell phonetically, and to use a word she was in 
doubt of. What I wanted her to do was to say 
the things in her soul — if the expression can be 
forgiven. 

I believe (and those who do not believe some- 
thing of the kind will not find the forthcoming 
ideas of education of any interest) that there 
is a sleeping giant within every one of us ; a power 
as great in relation to our immediate brain fac- 
ulties, as the endless string is great in relation 

* [87] 



CHILD AND COUNTRY 



to one bead. I believe that every great moment 
of expression in poetry and invention and in 
every craft and bit of memorable human conduct, 
is significant of the momentary arousing of this 
sleeping giant within. I believe that modern life 
and modern education of the faculties of brain 
and memory are unerringly designed to deepen 
the sleep of this giant. I believe, under the influ- 
ence of modern life on a self-basis, and modern 
education on a competitive basis, that the prison- 
house closes upon the growing child — that more 
and more as the years draw on, the arousing of the 
sleeping giant becomes impossible; that the lives 
of men are common on account of this, because 
the one perfect thing we are given to utter remains 
unexpressed. 

I believe by true life and true education that 
the prison-house can be prevented from closing 
upon the growing child; that the giant is eager 
to awake; that, awakened, he makes the thoughts, 
the actions, the smiles and the words of even a 
child significant. 

I believe that an ordinary child thus awakened 
within, not only can but must become an extraor- 
dinary man or woman. This has already been 
proved for me in the room in which I write. I 
believe that this very awakening genius is the 
thing that has made immortal — shoemakers, 
blacksmiths and the humblest men who have 
brought truth and beauty to our lives from the 

[88] 



THE LITTLE GIRL 



past. Moreover the way, although it reverses 
almost every process of life and education that 
now occupies our life and race, is not hard, but a 
way of beauty and joyousness, and the way is no 
secret. 



[89] 



8 
THE ABBOT 



HE was a still boy — the boy who had 
first shown us the two cottages on the 
shore the afternoon his father was ill. 
You would have thought him without 
temperament. I often recalled how little he knew 
about the affairs of prospective tenants that aft- 
ernoon; and how Penelope rescued me from 
his silences. . . . We saw him often, coming 
down to bathe with another lad during the after- 
noons throughout that first summer, but drew 
no nearer to acquaintance. Sometimes as I rode 
to town for mail in the evening I would see him 
watching me from his walk or porch; and the 
sense that his regard was somehow different, I 
believe, did impress me vaguely. It all happened 
in a leisurely sort of ordained fashion. I remem- 
ber his "hello," cheerful but contained, as I would 
ride by. He was always still as a gull, and 
seemed natural with the dusk upon him. . . . 
One day his father said to me : 

[90] 



THE ABBOT 



"I have to buy everything you write for him." 

"Well, well," said I. 

I had not looked for market in the little town, 
and The Abbot was only fourteen. (One of the 
older boys christened him The Abbot afterward, 
because he seemed so freshly come from monastic 
training.) . . . Finally I heard he was interested 
in the stars and owned a telescope. I called him 
over to the Study one day, and we talked star- 
stuff. He had done all that I had and more. It 
appears that in his Sunday School paper when he 
was seven or eight, there had been an astronomical 
clipping of some sort that awakened him. He 
had it read to him several times, but his own read- 
ing picked up at that time with an extraordinary 
leap, as any study does under driving interest. 
Presently he was out after the star books on his 
own hook. He suggested bringing his telescope to 
the Study, and that night I got my first look at 
the ineffable isolation of Saturn. It was like some 
magnetic hand upon my breast. I could not speak. 
Every time I shut my eyes afterward I saw that 
bright gold jewel afar in the dark. We talked. 
. . . Presently I heard that he hated school, but 
this did not come from him. The fact is, I heard 
little or nothing from him. 

This generation behind us — at least, the few 
I have met and loved — is not made up of explain- 
ers. They let you find out. They seem able to 
wait. It is most convincing, to have events clean 

[91] 



CHILD AND COUNTRY 



up a fact which you misunderstood; to have your 
doubts moved aside, not by words, nor any glib- 
ness, but leisurely afterward by the landmarks 
of solid matter. He did not come to the Study 
unless called for. The little girl brought in word 
from him from time to time, and the little girl's 
mother, and the boy's father — a very worthy man. 
I heard again that he was not doing well in school. 
I knew he was significant, very much so, having 
met the real boy on star-matters. I knew that the 
trouble was they were making him look down 
at school, when he wanted to look up. His par- 
ents came over to dinner one day, and I said: 

"You'd better let the boy come to me every 
day." 

It was an impulse. I don't know to this hour 
why I said it, because at that time I wasn't alto- 
gether sure that I was conducting the little girl's 
education on the best possible basis. Moreover, 
it seemed to me even then that my own time was 
rather well filled. Neither his father nor mother 
enthused, and I heard no more from the subject 
for many days. Meeting The Abbot finally, I 
asked him what of school. 

"It's bad. I'm not doing anything. I hate it." 

"Did your father think I didn't mean what I 
said — about you coming to me for a time 4 ?" 

"I don't think he quite thought you meant it. 
And then he doesn't know what it would cost." 

I told him it wouldn't cost anything. There 

192] 



THE ABBOT 



was a chance to talk with his father again, but 
nothing came of that, and The Abbot was still 
suffering weeks afterward. Finally his father and 
uncle came over to the Study. It seemed impos- 
sible for them to open the subject. I had to do 
it after an hour's conversation about immediate 
and interesting matters of weather and country. 

"I would like to try him," I said. "He can 
come an hour after dinner each day. He is dif- 
ferent. They can't bring him out, when they 
have to deal with so many." 

"He's a dreamer," they said, as if confessing 
a curse. 

It appears that there had been a dreamer in this 
family, a well-read man whose acres and interests 
had got away from him, long ago. 

"That's why I want him," said I. 

"But the thing is, we don't want him — a " 

"I know, you don't want an ineffectual. You 
want some dreams to come true — even if they 
are little ones " 

"Yes." 

I had my own opinion of a boy who could chart 
his own constellations, without meeting for years 
any one who cared enough about the stars to fol- 
low his processes, but one can't say too much 
about a boy to his relatives. Then I had to re- 
member that the little Lake town had only touched 
me on terms of trade. They did not know what 
sort of devil lived in my heart, and those who 

[93] 



CHILD AND COUNTRY 



were searching my books to find out were in the 
main only the more doubtful. Especially, I be- 
wildered these men by not asking for anything in 
the way of money. 

However, the thing came to be. 

My first idea was to take him alone — the lit- 
tle girl coming in the morning with me, and the 
boy after dinner, during an hour that I had been 
accustomed to read and doze. The first days 
were hard for us both. I sat down in a big 
chair before the fire and talked with him, but 
there was no sign. He stared at the stones and 
stared out of the window, his eyes sometimes 
filmy, his body sometimes tense. I seemed to re- 
quire at first some sort of recognition that I was 
talking — but none came, neither nod of acquies- 
cence, look of mystification nor denial. . . . They 
said as he passed the house farther along the 
Shore after leaving the Study, that his head was 
bowed and that he walked like a man heavy with 
years. 

I tried afresh each day — feared that I was not 
reaching him. I told him the things that had 
helped me through the darker early years, and 
some of the things I had learned afterward that 
would have helped me had I known enough. I 
tried different leads, returning often to the stars, 
but couldn't get a visible result. He was writing 
little things for me at this time and, though I 
detected something in the work more than he 

[94] 



THE ABBOT 



showed me, sitting opposite in the Study, his 
writing was turgid and unlit — like one playing on 
an instrument he did not understand; indeed, it 
was like a man talking in his sleep. At the end 
of one of the talks within the first week, at wit's 
end as to what I was accomplishing, I said: 

"Write me what you remember of what I said 
to-day." 

I touched upon this earlier. The result shocked 
me — it came back like a phonograph, but the 
thoughts were securely bound by his own under- 
standing. I once listened to a series of speeches 
of welcome from members of the Japanese Im- 
perial court to a group of foreigners in Tokyo. 
The interpreter would listen for several minutes 
and then in the pause of the speaker put the frag- 
ment into English for us, without a colour of his 
own, without disturbing even a gesture or an in- 
tonation of the source of eloquence and ideation. 
Something of the same returned to me from the 
boy's work. I tried him again on the plan a few 
days later — just to be sure. The result was the 
same. 

I have not done that since, because I do not 
wish to encourage physical memory, an imperma- 
nent and characterless faculty, developed to ex- 
cess in every current theory of education. You 
cannot lift or assist another, if your hands are 
full of objects of your own. One puts aside his 
belongings, when called upon to do something 

195] 



CHILD AND COUNTRY 



with his hands for another. Free-handed, he may 
succeed. It is the same with the mind. One's 
faculties are not open to revelations from the true 
origin of all values, if one's brain is clutching, 
with all its force, objects that the volition calls 
upon to be remembered. The memory is tem- 
poral; if this were not so, we would know the 
deeps of that great bourne from which we come. 
No man is significant in any kind of expression 
when he is using merely his temporal faculties. 
Time ruptures the products of these faculties as 
it does the very body and instrument that produces 
them. 

However, I realised that I had an almost super- 
natural attention from the lad who did not deign 
to grant me even a nod of acquiescence. I began 
to tell him a few things about the technical end 
of writing for others to read. I encountered re- 
sistance here. Until I pressed upon them a lit- 
tle, the same mistakes were repeated. This 
should have shown me before it did that the boy's 
nature was averse to actual fact-striving — that he 
could grasp a concept off the ground far easier 
than to watch his steps on the ground — that he 
could follow the flight of a bird, so to speak, with 
far more pleasure than he could pick up pins from 
the earth, even if permitted to keep the pins. I 
was so delighted to awaken the giant, however, that 
I was inclined to let pass, for the present, the mat- 
ters of fact and technicality. 

[96] 



THE ABBOT 



Finding that he listened so well — that it was 
merely one of the inexplicable surfaces of the new 
generation that dismayed me — I, of course, 
learned to give to him more and more freely. I 
allowed myself to overlap somewhat each day, 
gave little or no thought as to what I should say 
to him until the hour came. I was sleepy from 
old habit at first, but that passed. Presently it 
occurred to me that things were happening in the 
Study with the boy, that the little girl could ill 
afford to miss; and also that he would feel more 
at ease if I could divide my attention upon him 
with another, so I rearranged her plans somewhat, 
and there were two. 

As I recall, The Abbot had been coming about 
three weeks, when I related certain occult teach- 
ings in regard to the stars; matters very far from 
scientific astronomy which conducts its investiga- 
tions almost entirely from a physical standpoint. 
You may be sure I did not speak authoritatively, 
merely as one adding certain phases I had found 
interesting of an illimitable subject. The next 
day he slipped in alone and a bit early, his "hello" 
hushed. I looked up and he said, almost trem- 
bling: 

"I had a wonderful night." 

The saying was so emotional for him that I was 
excited as in the midst of great happenings. 

"Tell me," I said, drawing nearer. 

"It's all here," he replied, clearing his voice. 

[97] 



CHILD AND COUNTRY 



His own work follows, with scarcely a touch 
of editing. The Abbot called his paper — 

A VOICE THROUGH A LENS 

Some people say that by thinking hard of a 
thing in the day-time, you may dream about it. 
Perhaps this that I had last night was a dream, 
but it was more than a stomach dream. I like to 
think it was a true vision. Before bedtime I was 
reading out of two books; a little pamphlet on 
astronomy containing the nebular theory, and 
another that told about the planetary chain. 

The planetary chain was a continuation of the 
nebular theory, but in the spiritual form. It was 
that which threw me into the vision. I was away 
from the world; not in the physical form but in 
another — the first time I have ever lost my physi- 
cal body. When I awoke from the vision, I had 
my clothes still on. 

As I drifted off into that mighty sleep, the last 
thing I heard on earth was my mother playing and 
singing, "The Shepherd's Flute." It dulled my 
worldly senses and I slowly drifted away into the 
pleasant spiritual valley. Who could drift off 
in a more beautiful way than that? . . . 

I was gradually walking up the side of a large 
mountain to an observatory of splendour. The 
turret was crowned with gold. As I opened the 
door and stepped inside, I saw a large telescope 
and a few chairs. The observer's chair was up- 
holstered with velvet. It was not a complicated 
observatory like the worldly ones. ... I re- 
moved the cap of the great telescope, covering the 
object-glass, and then uncovered the eye-piece. As 

[98] 



THE ABBOT 



I looked around the heavens to find the great 
spiral of planets (the planetary chain told about) 
I heard a voice from the lens of the telescope say- 
ing : "This is the way. Follow me." 

I looked through the lens and there I saw a 
long spiral of planets leading heavenwards. The 
spiral gradually arose, not making any indication 
of steps, but the close connection of the rise was 
like the winding around of the threads of a screw. 
Towards the top, the spiral began to get larger 
until it was beyond sight. Presently I heard the 
voice again: "This no doubt is a complicated affair 
to you." 

"Yes." 

"Focus your telescope and then look and see if 
it is any clearer." 

I did so, and upon looking through the glass, I 
saw a large globe. It was cold and blank-looking. 
It seemed to be all rocks and upon close exami- 
nation I found that it was mostly mineral rocks. 
That globe drifted away and left a small trail of 
light until another came in sight. On this globe, 
there was a green over-tone, luxuriant vegetation. 
Everywhere there were trees and vegetable 
growths of all kinds. This one gradually drifted 
away like the preceding. The third was covered 
with animals of every description — a mass, a 
chaos of animals. The fourth was similarly 
crowded with hairy men in battle, the next two 
showed the development of these men — gradual 
refinement and civilisation. The seventh I did not 
see. 

I was staring into the dark abyss of the heavens, 
when I heard the voice again : 

"I suppose you are still amazed." 

[99] 



CHILD AND COUNTRY 



"Yes." 

"Well, then, listen to me and I'll try to explain 
it all. The great spiral of planets represents the 
way man progresses in the life eternal. Man's 
life on this earth is the life of a second, compared 
with the long evolution. In these six globes you 
saw when the telescope was focussed, is repre- 
sented the evolution of man. The rocks were 
first. As they broke up and melted into earth, 
vegetable life formed, crawling things emerged 
from vegetable life and animals from them. Man 
grew and lifted out from the form of lower ani- 
mals. The lower globes represented the devel- 
opment of man. In the long cycle of evolution, 
man continues in this way. After he finishes life 
on the seven globes, he starts over again on an- 
other seven, only the next group he lives on, his 
life keeps progressing. It is not the same life over 
again. Now you may look at the Seventh, the 
planet of Spirituality." 

When I looked through the telescope again, I 
saw a beautiful globe. It was one great garden. 
In it there was a monastery of Nature. Overhead 
the trees had grown together and formed a roof. 
Far off to the north stretched a low range of hills, 
also to the east and west, but at the south was 
a small brook which ran along close to the altar 
of the monastery. It seemed to be happy in its 
course to the lake as it leaped over rocky shelves 
and formed small cascades while the sunbeams 
shone through the matted branches of the trees 
whose limbs stretched far out over the brook, and 
made it appear like a river of silver. I was ad- 
miring the scenery when I heard the voice again : 

"You must go now, tell the people what you 

[100] 



THE ABBOT 



saw, and some other night you will see the globe 
of spirituality more closely." 

I awoke and found myself sitting in the big 
arm-chair of my room. "Can it be true, am I 
mistaken ?" I pinched myself to see if I were 
awake; walked over to the window and looked 
out. There the world was just the same. I was 
so taken with the wonderful vision that at the hour 
of midnight I sit here and scratch these lines off. 
I have done as the great mystic voice commanded 
me, although it is roughly done. I hope to be 
able to tell you about the rest of the vision and 
more about the seventh globe some time again. 



[ 101 1 



9 
THE VALLEY-ROAD GIRL 



THE Abbot had been with me about three 
months when he said: 
"We were out to dinner yesterday to 
a house on the Valley Road, and the 
girl there is interested in your work. She asked 
many things about it. She's the noblest girl I 
know." 

That last is a literal quotation. I remember it 
because it appealed to me at the time and set me 
to thinking. 

"How old is she?" 
"Seventeen." 

"What is she interested in'?" 
"Writing, I think. She was the best around 
here in the essays." 

"You might ask her to come." 
I heard no more for a time. The Abbot does 
not rush at things. At the end of a week he 
remarked : 

"She is coming." 

[102] 



THE VALLEY-ROAD GIRL 



It was two or three days after that before I 
saw them walking down the lane together. . . . 
She took a seat by the door — she takes it still, 
the same seat. It was an ordeal for her; also 
for The Abbot who felt in a sense responsible; 
also for me. . . . I could not begin all over again, 
in justice to him. We would have to continue 
his work and the little girl's and gradually draw 
the new one into an accelerating current. We 
called her The Valley-Road Girl. She suffered. 
It was very strange to her. She had been at school 
eleven years. I did not talk stars; in fact, I fell 
back upon the theme of all themes to me — a man's 
work, the meaning of it; what he gets and what 
the world gets out of it; intimating that this was 
not a place to learn how to reach the book and 
story markets. I said something the first day, 
which a few years ago I should have considered 
the ultimate heresy — that the pursuit of literature 
for itself, or for the so-called art of it, is a vain 
and tainted undertaking that cannot long hold a 
real man ; that the real man has but one business : 
To awaken his potentialities, which are different 
from the potentialities of any other man; to 
express them in terms of matter the best he can, 
the straightest, simplest way he can. I said that 
there is joy and blessedness in doing this and 
in no other activity under the sun; that it is the 
key to all good; the door to a man's religion; 
that work and religion are the same at the top; 

[103] 



CHILD AND COUNTRY 



that the nearer one reaches the top, the more tre- 
mendous and gripping becomes the conception that 
they are one; finally that a man doing his own 
work for others, losing the sense of self in his work, 
is touching the very vitalities of religion and in- 
tegrating the life that lasts. 

I have said this before in this book — in other 
books. I may say it again. It is the truth to me 
— truth that the world is in need of. I am sorry 
for the man who has not his work. A man's work, 
such as I mean, is production. Handling the pro- 
duction of others in some cases is production. 
There are natural orderers and organisers, natural 
synthesisers, shippers, assemblers, and traffic mas- 
ters. A truth is true in all its parts; there are 
workmen for all the tasks. 

The Valley-Road Girl's work, in the first days, 
reminded me of my own early essay classes. Old 
friends were here again — Introduction, Discus- 
sion, Conclusion. Her things were rigid, mental. 
I could see where they would make very good in 
a school-room, such as I had known. Her work 
was spelled and periodic, phrased and para- 
graphed. The eyes of the teachers, that had been 
upon her these many years, had turned back for 
their ideas to authors who, if writing to-day, 
would be forced to change the entire order and 
impulse of their craft. 

She was suffused with shyness. Even the little 
girl so far had not penetrated it. I was afraid 

[104] 



THE VALLEY-ROAD GIRL 

to open the throttle anywhere, lest she break and 
drop away. At the end of a week, The Abbot 
remained a moment after she was gone, and looked 
at me with understanding and sorrow. 

"I'm afraid I made a mistake in asking her to 
come/' he said. 

Just then I was impelled to try harder, be- 
cause he saw the difficulty. We had missed for 
days the joy from the session, that we had come 
to expect and delight in. Yet, because he ex- 
pressed it, I saw the shortness and impatience of 
the point of view which had been mine, until he 
returned it to me. 

"We won't give up," I said. "It didn't hap- 
pen for nothing." 

When he went away I felt better; also I saw 
that there was a personal impatience in my case 
that was not worthy of one who undertook to 
awaken the young. I introduced The Valley-Road 
Girl to Addison's "Sir Roger." There is an empti- 
ness to me about Addison which I am not sure 
but partakes of a bit of prejudice, since I am pri- 
marily imbued with the principle that a writer 
must be a man before he is fit to be read. If I 
could read Addison now for the first time, I should 
know. The Valley Road Girl's discussion of Ad- 
dison was scholarly in the youthful sense. 

The day that she brought in this paper we got 
somehow talking about Fichte. The old German 

[105] 



CHILD AND COUNTRY 



is greatly loved and revered in this Study. He 
set us free a bit as we discussed him, and I gave 
to the newcomer a portion of one of his essays 
having to do with the "Excellence of the Uni- 
verse." The next day I read her paper — and there 
was a beam in it. 

I shut my eyes in gratitude that I had not al- 
lowed my stupidity to get away. I thanked The 
Abbot inwardly, too, for saying the words that set 
me clearer. The contrast between Addison and 
Fichte in life, in their work, in the talk they in- 
spired here, and in The Valley-Road Girl's two 
papers — held the substance of the whole matter 
— stumbled upon as usual. We had a grand time 
that afternoon. I told them about Fichte losing 
his positions, writing to his countrymen — a wan- 
derer, an awakened soul. And this brought us 
the hosts of great ones — the Burned Ones and 
their exaltations — George Fox and the Maid of 
Domremy — the everlasting spirit behind and 
above mortal affairs — the poor impotency of 
wood-fire to quench such immortality. Her eyes 
gleamed — and all our hearts burned. 

"We do not want to do possible things," I said. 
"The big gun that is to deposit a missile twelve 
miles away does not aim at the mark, but at the 
skies. All things that are done — let them alone. 
The undone things challenge us. The spiritual 
plan of all the great actions and devotions which 
have not yet found substance — is already pre- 

[106] 



THE VALLEY-ROAD GIRL 

pared for the workmen of to-day to bring into 
matter — all great poems and inventions for the 
good of the world. They must gleam into being 
through our minds. The mind of some workman is 
being prepared for each. Our minds are darkened 
as yet; the sleeping giant awaits the day. He is 
not loathe to awake. Inertia is always of mat- 
ter; never of spirit. He merely awaits the light. 
When the shutters of the mind are opened and 
the grey appears, he will arise and, looking forth, 
will discover his work. 

"Nothing common awaits the youngest or the 
oldest. You are called to the great, the impos- 
sible tasks. But the mind must be entered by the 
Light — the heavy curtains of the self drawn 
apart. . . " 

That was the day I found the new, sweet influ- 
ence in the room. It was not an accident that 
the boy had gone to dinner at her house. I saw 
that my task with The Valley-Road Girl was 
exactly opposite to the work with The Abbot — 
that he was dynamic within and required only 
the developed instrument for his utterances, and 
that she had been mentalised with obscuring edu- 
cational matters and required a re-awakening of a 
naturally splendid and significant power; that 
I must seek to diffuse her real self through her 
expression. The time came that when she was ab- 
sent, we all deeply missed her presence from the 
Study. 

[107] 



CHILD AND COUNTRY 



Months afterward, on a day that I did not 
give her a special task, she brought me the fol- 
lowing which told the story in her own words of 
something she had met: 

WHAT THE SCHOOLS DO FOR CHILDREN 

Try to remember some of your early ideas and 
impressions. Can you recall the childish thoughts 
that came when a new thing made its first impress 
on your mind? If so, try to feel with me the 
things I am struggling to explain. 

I like to look back at those times when every- 
thing to me was new; when every happening 
brought to me thoughts of my very own. Just 
now I recall the time I first noticed a tiny chick 
raise its head after drinking from a basin of 
water. To me that slow raising of the head after 
drinking seemed to indicate the chick's silent 
thanks to God. It meant that for each swallow 
it offered thanks. This was before I went to 
school. 

There I learned the plain truth that the chick 
must raise its head to swallow. School had 
grasped the door-knob of my soul. The many 
children taught me the world's lesson that each 
man must look out for himself. If the simpler 
children did not keep up, that was their look- 
out. There was no time to stop and help the less 
fortunate. Push ahead! This is what I came 
to learn. 

At school I met for the first time with distrust. 
At home I had always been trusted; my word 
never doubted. Once I was accused of copying; 

[108] 



THE VALLEY-ROAD GIRL 

that was the first wound. How I would have 
those all-powerful teachers make the child know 
he is trusted. 

At school there were many other lessons for me 
to learn. One of the chief was competition. I 
learned it early. To have some of the class-stars 
shine brighter than I was intolerable. To shine 
as bright, was sufficient compensation for any 
amount of labour. The teachers encouraged com- 
petition. It lent life to labour; made the chil- 
dren more studious. Our motto was not to do our 
best, but to do as well as the best. Competition 
often grew so keen among my school friends that 
rivalry, jealousy and dislike entered our hearts. I 
am afraid we sometimes rejoiced at one another's 
misfortunes. Yet these competitors were my 
school friends. Out of school we were all fond of 
one another, but in school we grew further apart. 
My sister would compete with no one. I have 
often since wondered if that is why she, of all my 
school companions, has ever been my closest 
friend. The child filled with the competitive spirit 
from his entrance to his egress from school, enters 
the world a competitive man. It is hard for such 
a one to love his neighbour. 

The one thing I consider of great benefit from 
school life is the taste of the world it gave me. 
For school is the miniature world. A man is said 
to benefit from a past evil. 

The school did not teach me to express myself; 
it taught me how to echo the books I read. I did 
not look through my own eyes, but used the teach- 
er's. I tried to keep from my work all trace of 
myself, reflecting only my instruction, knowing 
well that the teacher would praise his perfect re- 

[109] 



CHILD AND COUNTRY 



flection. Sometimes I feel that the door of my 
soul has so far shut that I can but get a glimpse 
of the real Me within. 

Unless the school can trust children, show them 
that they should also be interested in their less 
fortunate school-mates, try to do always their 
best at the particular work to which they are best 
adapted, it must go on failing. A child had much 
better remain at home, a simple but whole-souled 
creature, learning what he can from Nature and 
wise books. 

... I had talked to them long on making the 
most of their misfortunes, This also which came 
from The Valley-Road Girl, I thought very tender 
and wise : 

MAY EVENING 

A spirit of restlessness ruled me. Each night 
I retired with the hope that the morning would 
find it gone. It disturbed my sleep. It was not 
the constant discontent I had hitherto felt with 
the world. This was a new disquietude. 

One May evening I followed our little river 
down to the place it flows into the Lake. Slowly 
the light of day faded. From my seat upon the 
green bank of a stream, a wonderful picture 
stretched before me. The small stream and the 
surrounding country were walled in by dense green 
trees. To the west the cool, dark depths parted 
only wide enough for the creek to disappear 
through a narrow portal. Through small open- 
ings in the southern wall, I caught glimpses of 

[110] 



THE VALLEY-ROAD GIRL 

the summer cottages on the sandy shore. To the 
north stretched the pasture-lands with shade-trees 
happy to hide their nakedness with thick foliage. 
Here, too, a large elm displayed all its grace. To 
the east was a bridge and a long lane. From be- 
hind a misty outline of trees, the sun's crimson re- 
flections suffused the western sky. Two men pad- 
dled a boat out into the light and disappeared un- 
der the bridge. Nothing disturbed the peace of 
the stream save the dip of the paddles, and the 
fish rising to the surface for food. A circle on 
the surface meant that an insect had lain at its 
centre; a fish had risen and devoured it. Circles 
of this kind were continually being cut by the cir- 
cumferences of other circles. ... A dark speck 
moved down the stream. A turtle was voyaging. 

Now, far in the shadows, I saw a man sitting on 
the bank fishing. His patience and persistence 
were remarkable, for he had been there all the 
time. But the fish were at play. The occasional 
splash of the carp, mingling with the perpetual 
song of the birds and the distant roar of the waves 
breaking on the shore to the south, formed one 
grand over-tone. 

A feeling of awe came over me. I felt my 
insignificance. I saw the hand of God. My rela- 
tion to my surroundings was very clear. My soul 
bowed to the God-ness in all things natural. The 
God-ness in me was calling to be released. It 
was useless to struggle against it, and deafen my 
ears to the cry. It must be given voice. I felt 
my soul condemning me as an echoer and imitator 
of men, as one whose every thought becomes col- 
oured with others' views. Like a sponge I was 
readily receptive. Let a little mental pressure be 

[ill] 



CHILD AND COUNTRY 



applied and I gave back the identical thoughts 
hardly shaded by inward feelings. This was my 
soul's complaint. 

No tree was exactly like one of its neighbours. 
Each fulfilled its purpose in its particular way. 
Yet all proclaimed the One Source. Performing 
its function, it was fit to censure me and I took 
the cup. 

. . . The sun had set. Darkness was wrap- 
ping the basin of the little stream; heavy dew 
was falling. Mother Nature was weeping tears 
of sympathy for one so short-sighted and drawn 
to failure. 



[112] 



io 
COMPASSION 



I WAS struck early in the progress of the class 
of three with the difference between the lit- 
tle girl, now turned eleven, and the other 
two of fourteen and seventeen, in the one 
particular of daring to be herself. She has never 
been patronised; and in the last year or more has 
been actively encouraged to express the lovely and 
the elusive. Also, as stated, she has no particular 
talent for writing. She is the one who wants 
to be a mother. Not in the least precocious, her 
charm is quite equal for little girls or her elders. 
Her favourite companions until recently were those 
of her own age. 

On the contrary, the other two were called to 
the work here because they want to write, and 
although this very tendency should keep open the 
passages between the zone of dreams and the more 
temperate zones of matter, the fashions and man- 
nerisms of the hour, artfulness of speech and 

reading, the countless little reserves and covers 

[H3] 



CHILD AND COUNTRY 



for neglected thinking, the endless misunderstand- 
ings of life and the realities of existence — had al- 
ready began to clog the ways which, to every old 
artist, are the very passages of power. 

". . . Except that ye become as little chil- 
dren " that is the beginning of significant 

workmanship, as it is the essential of faith in reli- 
gion. The great workmen have all put away the 
illusions of the world, or most of them, and all 
have told the same story — look to Rodin, Puvis 
de Chavannes, Balzac, Tolstoi, only to mention a 
little group of the nearer names. In their mid- 
years they served men, as they fancied men 
wanted to be served; and then they met the lie 
of this exterior purpose, confronted the lie with 
the realities of their own nature, and fought the 
fight for the cosmic simplicity which is so often 
the unconscious flowering of the child-mind. All 
of them wrenched open, as they could, the doors 
of the prison-house, and became more and more 
like little children at the end. 

The quality I mean is difficult to express in 
straight terms. One must have the settings to see 
and delight in them. But it is also the quality 
of the modern verse. The new generation has it 
as no other generation, because the old shames and 
conventions are losing their weight in our hearts. 
... I was promising an untold something for a 
future lesson to the little girl yesterday, just as 

[114] 



COMPASSION 



she was getting to work. The anticipation dis- 
turbed the present moment, and she said: 

"Don't have secrets. When there are secrets, 
I always want to peek " 

Yesterday, a little later, we both looked up 
from work at the notes of a song-sparrow in the 
nearest elm. The song was more elaborate for the 
perfect morning. It was so joyous that it choked 
me — in the sunlight and elm-leaves. It stood out 
from all the songs of the morning because it was 
so near — every note so finished and perfect, and 
we were each in the pleasantness of our tasks. 
The little girl leaned over to the window. I was 
already watching. We heard the answer from the 
distance. The song was repeated, and again. In 
the hushes, we sipped the ecstasy from the Old 
Mother — that the sparrow knew and expressed. 
Like a flicker, he was gone — a leaning forward on 
the branch and then a blur, . . . presently this 
sentence in the room : 

". . . sang four songs and flew away." 

It was a word-portrait. It told me so much 
that I wanted ; the number of course was not men- 
tal, but an obvious part of the inner impression. 
However, no after explanations will help — if 
the art of the thing is not apparent. I told it 
later in the day to another class, and a woman 
said — "Why, those six words make a Japanese 
poem." 

And yesterday again, as we walked over to din- 

[115] 



CHILD AND COUNTRY 



ner, she said: "I see a Chinese city. It is dim 
and low and smoky. It is night and the lights 
are at half-mast." 

She had been making a picture of her own of 
China. It throws the child in on herself to imag- 
ine thus. She has never been to China, and her 
reading on the subject was not recent. I always 
say to them : "It is all within. If you can listen 
deeply enough and see far enough, you can get 
it all. When a man wishes to write about a coun- 
try, he is hindered as much as helped if he knows 
much about it. He feels called upon to express 
that which he has seen — which is so small com- 
pared to the big colour and atmosphere." 

I had been to China but would have required 
a page to make such a picture. 

A little while before she had been to Holland 
in fancy. She had told a story of a child there 
and "the little house in which she lived looked 
as if it had been made of old paving-blocks ripped 
up from the street." 

Often she falls back upon the actual physical 
environment to get started, as this recent intro- 
duction: "To-day I am sitting on the end of a 
breakwater, listening to the peaceful noise the 
Lake makes as it slaps up against the heavy old 
rocks. The sun is pouring down hot rays upon 
my arms, bare feet and legs, turning them from 
winter's faded white " 

Or: 



[116] 



COMPASSION 



"Once I had my back up against an old Beech 
tree on a carpet of spring beauties and violet 
plants. Spiders, crickets and all sorts of little 
woodland bugs went crawling on me and around, 
but instead of shuddering at their little legs, I 
felt a part " 

I said to her about the China picture: "Put it 
down, and be careful to write it just as you see 
it, not trying to say what you have heard, — at 
least, until after your first picture is made." . . . 
I had a conviction that something prompted that 
"half-mast" matter, and that if we could get just 
at that process in the child's mind, we should have 
something very valuable for all concerned. But 
we can only approximate the inner pictures. The 
quality of impressionism in artistry endeavours to 
do that — to hurl the fleeting things into some kind 
of lasting expression. The greatest expressionist 
can only approximate, even after he has emerged 
from the prison-house and perfected his instru- 
ment through a life of struggle. His highest 
moments of production are those of his deepest 
inner listening — in which the trained mind-instru- 
ment is quiescent and receptive, its will entirely 
given over to the greater source within. 

The forenoons with the little girl before the 
others came, showed me, among many things, that 
education should be mainly a happy process. If 
I find her getting too dreamy with the things she 
loves (that her expression is becoming "wum- 

[117] 



CHILD AND COUNTRY 



bled," as Algernon Blackwood says), I administer 
a bit of stiff reading for the pure purpose of 
straightening out the brain. The best and dryest 
of the human solids is John Stuart Mill. 
Weights, measures and intellectual balances are 
all honest in his work — honest to madness. He 
is the perfect antidote for dreams. Burke's 
ancient essay "On the Sublime" is hard reading, 
but has its rewards. You will laugh at a child 
of ten or eleven reading these things. I once kept 
the little girl for three days on the latter, and 
when I opened the doors of her refrigerating plant, 
and gave her Thoreau's "Walking" — there was 
something memorable in the liberation. She took 
to Thoreau, as one held in after a week of storm 
emerges into full summer. The release from 
any struggle leaves the mind with a new recep- 
tivity. It was not that I wanted her to get Mill 
or Burke, but that the mental exercise which comes 
from grappling with these slaves of logic, or mas- 
ters, as you like, is a development of tissue, upon 
which the dreams, playing forth again from 
within, find a fresh strength for expression. 

Dreaming without action is a deadly dissipa- 
tion. The mind of a child becomes fogged and 
ineffective when the dreams are not brought forth. 
Again, the dreams may be the brooding of a 
divine one, and yet if the mind does not fur- 
nish the power for transmuting them into matter, 
they are without value, and remain hid treasures. 

[118] 



COMPASSION 



It is the same as faith without works. While I 
hold the conviction that the brain itself is best 
developed by the egress of the individual, rather 
than by any processes from without, yet I would 
not keep the exterior senses closed. 

In fact, just here is an important point of this 
whole study. In the case of The Abbot it was 
the intellect which required development, even to 
begin upon the expression of that within which 
was mainly inarticulate, but mightily impressive, 
at least, to me. The Valley-Road Girl's mind was 
trained. She had obeyed scrupulously. In her 
case, the first business was to re-awaken her within, 
and her own words have related something of the 
process. 

The point is this : If I have seemed at any time 
to make light of intellectual development, sub- 
serving it to intuitional expression, it is only be- 
cause nineteen-twentieths of the effort of current 
educational systems is toward mental training to 
the neglect of those individual potencies which are 
the first value of each life, and the expression of 
which is the first purpose of life itself. My zeal 
for expression from within-outward amounts to an 
enthusiasm, and is stated rushingly as an heroic 
measure is brought, only because it is so pitifully 
overlooked in the present scheme of things. 

Latin, mathematics, the great fact-world, above 
all that endlessly various plane of fruition which 
Nature and her infinite processes amount to, are 

[119] 



CHILD AND COUNTRY 



all splendid tissue-builders; and of this tissue 
is formed the calibre of the individual by which 
his service is made effective to the world. As I 
have already written, one cannot shoot a forty- 
five consciousness through a twenty-two brain. 
The stirring concept cannot get through to the 
world except through the brain. 

In the last sentence I see a difficulty for the 
many who still believe that the brain contains 
the full consciousness. Holding that, most of 
the views stated here fall away into nothing. Per- 
haps one is naive, not to have explained before, 
that from the view these things are written the 
brain is but a temporary instrument of expression 
— most superb and admirable at its best, but death 
is at work upon it; at its best, a listener, an inter- 
preter, without creativeness ; an instrument, like 
the machine which my fingers touch, but played 
upon not only from without but within. 

If you look at the men who have become great 
in solitude, in prison, having been forced to turn 
their eyes within — you will find a hint to the pos- 
sibilities. Yet they are rare compared to the many 
upon whom solitude has been thrust as the most 
terrible punitive process. By the time most men 
reach mid-life they are entirely dependent upon 
exterior promptings for their mental activity — the 
passage entirely closed between their intrinsic 
content and the brain that interprets. Solitary 

[ 120] 



COMPASSION 



confinement makes madmen of such — if the door 
cannot be wrenched ajar. 

The human brain is like a sieve, every brain 
differently meshed. If the current flows continu- 
ally in one direction either from within-outward, 
or from the world-inward, the meshes become 
clogged, and can be cleansed only, as a sieve is 
flushed, by reversing the current. The ideal is to 
be powerful mentally and spiritually, of course. 
"I would have you powerful in two worlds," a 
modern Persian mystic said to one of his disciples. 
. . . Still I would not hold the two methods of 
development of equal importance. The world is 
crowded with strongly developed intellects that 
are without enduring significance, because they 
are not ignited by that inner individual force 
which would make them inimitable. 

A man must achieve that individuality which is 
not a threescore-ten proposition, and must begin 
to express it in his work before he can take his 
place in the big cosmic orchestra. In fact, he 
must achieve his own individuality before he has 
a decent instrument to play upon, or any sense 
of interpretation of the splendid scores of life. In 
fact again, a man must achieve his own indi- 
viduality before he can realise that the sense of 
his separateness which he has laboured under so 
long is a sham and a delusion. 

Until a man has entered with passion upon the 
great conception of the Unity of all Existing 

[121] 



CHILD AND COUNTRY 



Things (which is literally brooding upon this 
planet in these harrowing but high days of his- 
tory), he is still out of the law, and the greater his 
intellect, the more destructive his energy. Time 
has made the greatest of the sheer intellects of the 
past appear apish and inane; and has brought 
closer and closer to us with each racial crisis 
(sometimes the clearer according to their centu- 
ries of remoteness) those spiritual intelligences 
who were first to bring us the conception of the 
Oneness of All Life, and the immortal fire, Com- 
passion, which is to be the art of the future. 

Finally, a man must achieve his own individu- 
ality before he has anything fit to give the world. 
He achieves this by the awakening of the giant 
within, whom many have reason to believe is im- 
mortal. Inevitably this awakening is an illumi- 
nation of the life itself; and in the very dawn of 
this greater day, in the first touch of that white 
fire of Compassion, the Unity of All Things is 
descried. 



[ 122 ] 



11 
THE LITTLE GIRL'S WORK 



WE will do a book of travels," I said 
to the little girl. "You have done 
Holland; you are on China. After 
you have made your picture of 
China, I'll tell you what I saw there in part, and 
give you a book to read." 

So often her own progress has given me a cue 
like this for the future work. I put The Abbot 
on this travel-work for a few days, starting him 
with Peru. He found a monastery there. In 
India he found monasteries, even in the northern 
woods of Ontario. He would shut his eyes; the 
setting would form, and after his period of im- 
aginative wandering, the monastery would be the 
reward. I will not attempt to suggest the psy- 
chology of this, but to many there may be a link 
in it. In any event, the imagination is developed, 
and its products expressed. 

The little girl was asked to write an essay on 
a morning she had spent along the Shore. She 

[123] 



CHILD AND COUNTRY 



sat in the Study with a pencil and paper on her 
lap — and long afterward, perhaps ten minutes, 
exclaimed : 

"Why, I began at the beginning and told the 
whole story to myself, and now I've got to begin 
all over and write it, and it won't be half so 
good." 

"Yes, that's the hard part, to put it down," 
I said. "Write and write until you begin to 
dream as you write — until you forget hand and 
paper and place, and instead of dreaming simply 
make the hand and brain interpret the dream 
as it comes. That is the perfect way." 

In these small things which I am printing of 
the little girl's, you will get a glimpse of her 
reading and her rambles. Perhaps you will get 
an idea, more clearly than I can tell it, of the 
nature of the philosophy back of the work here, 
but there can be no good in hiding that. All who 
come express themselves somehow each day. I 
have merely plucked these papers from the near- 
est of scores of her offerings. There seems to be 
a ray in everything she does, at least one in a 
paper. What is more cheerfully disclosed than 
anything else, from my viewpoint, is the quick- 
ening imagination. Apparently she did not title 
this one : 



Nature is most at home where man has not 
yet started to build his civilisation. Of course, 

[ 124] 



THE LITTLE GIRL'S WORK 

she is everywhere — in Germany, in Canada and 
California, but the Father is more to be seen with 
her in the wild places. 

In the beginning everything belonged to Na- 
ture. She is the Mother. Flowers, then, could 
grow where and when they wanted to, without 
being placed in all kinds of star and round and 
square shapes. Some of their leaves could be 
longer than others if Nature liked, without being 
cut. The great trees, such as beeches, elms, oaks 
and cedars, could coil and curve their branches 
without the thought of being cut down for a side- 
walk, or trimmed until they were frivolous noth- 
ings. Small stones and shells could lie down on a 
bed of moss at the feet of these trees and ask ques- 
tions that disgraced Mr. Beech. (But of course 
they were young.) The flower fairies could sit 
in the sunlight and laugh at the simple little 
stones. 

Oh ! dear, I just read this through and it's silly. 
It sounds like some kind of a myth, written in the 
Fifteenth Century instead of the Twentieth, but I 
am not going to tear it up. The thing I really 
wanted to write about this morning was the good- 
ness of being alive here in winter. 

After a long, lovely sleep at night, in a room 
with wide-open windows and plenty of covers, you 
wake up fresh and happy. From the East comes 
up over the frozen Lake, the sun sending streaks 
of orange, red, yellow, all through the sky. 

Here and there are little clouds of soft greys 
and pinks, which look like the fluffy heads of young 
lettuce. 

Venus in the south, big and wonderful, fades 

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CHILD AND COUNTRY 



out of sight when the last shades of night pass out 
of the sky. 

Dress, every minute the sky growing more bril- 
liant, until you cannot look at it. A breakfast of 
toast and jam — just enough to make you feel like 
work. 

A short walk to the Study with the sweet smell 
of wood-smoke sharpening the air. Then in the 
Study, reading essays by great men, especially of 
our favourite four Americans, Thoreau, Emer- 
son, Whitman, and Lincoln. A wonderful Nature 
essay from Thoreau ! 

So many things of Nature are spoiled to make 
more money for men; so many lambs and horses 
and birds are killed to make coats and hats. 
Horses are killed and sold as beef, and the ani- 
mals are slaughtered in such hideous and vulgar 
ways — maddened with fear in butchers' pens be- 
fore the end. Wise people know that fears are 
poison. Day by day and year by year these poi- 
sons are being worked into our bodies until we 
get used to them and then we find it hard to stop 
eating meat. A person in this condition is never 
able to associate with the mysteries of earth, such 
as fairies and nymphs of flowers, water and fire, 
nor with the real truths of higher Nature, which 
men should know. 

In among the rocks and mountains I can imag- 
ine cross, ugly little gnomes going about their 
work — I mean their own work and affairs. To me 
it seems that gnomes are not willing to associate 
with people; they haven't got the time to bother 
with us. They go grumbling about, muttering: 

[126] 



THE LITTLE GIRL'S WORK 

"Somebody sat on my rock; somebody sat on my 
rock." 

I would like to see them and find out what 
they are so busy about; see the patterns of their 
leathery little clothes; their high hats, leathery 
capes and aprons. Some time I will see them. I 
am not familiar with all this, but I imagine very 
thick leather belts and buckles. Their feet are 
small, but too big for them, and make a little clat- 
ter as they go over the rocks. Their hands I can- 
not see ; they must be under the cape or somewhere 
that I do not know of. 

The Spring, I think, is the best time for the 
little green woodsmen. The trees are beginning 
to get pale-green buds, and the ground is all damp 
from being frozen so long. The woodsmen sing a 
great deal then and laugh and talk. They come 
to the edge of the river when a boat comes in, but 
if one moves quickly they all run away. 

I think there must have been many happy little 
fairies and cross old gnomes in the northern 
woods where I stayed a week last summer. There 
were so many great rocks, so many trees and all. 
Many mysteries must have floated around me 
wanting me to play with them, but I wasn't ready. 
Fairies were only a dream to me then. But some 
time I must have been a friend of the fairies, for 
it seems to me that I have seen them, and spent 
a good deal of time with them, because the memo- 
ries are still with me. I will spend most of my 
spare time with them next summer and learn much 
more about them. 

. . . She could get no further on the Chinese 
picture, except that the low street lamps were 

[127] 



CHILD AND COUNTRY 



shaped like question-marks. I told her there was 
something in that street if she could find it, sug- 
gesting that she might think hard about it the 
last thing at night before she went to sleep, but 
I have heard nothing further. On occasions I have 
been stopped short. For instance, yesterday the 
little girl began to tell me something with great 
care, and I was away until she was in the middle 
of the story, and the intimate gripping thing about 
it aroused me. I told her to write the thing down 
just as she had told it, with this result: 

". . . Every little while, when I am not think- 
ing of any one thing, there is a voice inside. It 
seems to be telling me something, but I never know 
what it says. I never wanted or tried to know 
until a month ago, but it stops before I can get 
the sense of it. It is three things, I am sure, be- 
cause after the voice stops these three things run 
through my mind, just as quick as the voice came 
and went away: A thought which is full of mys- 
tery; another one that is terrible; and the third 
which is strange but very funny. The third seems 
to be connected with Mother in some way; some- 
thing she said many, many years ago. ... I 
asked Mother to talk that way, and she talked 
like old country women, but it was not the voice 
I asked for. n 

I have read this many times, unable to inter- 
pret. One of the loveliest things about the child- 
mind is its expectancy for answers, for fulfilments 

at once. 

[128 1 



THE LITTLE GIRLS WORK 

"I do not know what it means," I said. "If 
some answer came, I could not be sure that it was 
the perfect one, but I am thinking about it every 
day, and perhaps something will come." 

These are serious things. . . . Here is one of 
her more recent products on Roses : 

If one wants to have perfect beauty and the 
odour of the Old Mother herself in his yard, he 
will plant roses. I cannot express in words what 
roses bring to me when I look down at them or 
sniff their magnificently shaded petals. They seem 
to pull me right out of the body and out into 
another world where everything is beautiful, and 
where people do not choose the red ramblers for 
their garden favourites, but the real tea roses. 

I took three roses into a house — a red one, a 
white one, very much finer than the first, and the 
third a dream-rose that takes me into the other 
world — the kind of yellow rose that sits in a jet 
bowl leaning on the cross in the Chapel room 
every day. 

A girl that was in that house looked at the 
roses. 

"Oh," she shouted, after a moment, "what a 
grand red one that is !" 

"Which one do you like best?" I asked. 

"The red one, of course," the girl answered. 

"Why, the other two are much " I began. 

"No, they ain't," said the girl. "Don't you 
know every one likes them red ones best?" 

I walked away. I believe that city people who 
never see Nature, know her better from their read- 
ing than country people who are closer to her 

[ 129] 



CHILD AND COUNTRY 



brown body (than those who walk on pavements) 
but never look any higher. And I think country 
people like red roses because they are like them. 
The red roses do not know they are not so beau- 
tiful as the yellow teas; they bloom just as long 
and often, and often grow bigger. They are not 
ashamed. 

A mystery to me: A tiny piece of exquisite 
foliage is put into the ground. After a while 
its leaves all fall off and it is bare and brown, 
like a little stick in the snow. Yet down under 
the snow at the roots of the brown stick, fairy 
rose spirits are being worked up into the small 
stalks. They have been waiting for a rose to 
be put into the ground that is fine enough for 
them, and it has come — and others. Months aft- 
erward, a dozen or more of pinkish yellow-golden 
roses come out, loosening as many fairy spirits 
again. Isn't it all wonderful? 

I enjoyed the first reading of this which the lit- 
tle girl called A Grey Day : 

Small, cold, happy waves constantly rolling up 
on the tan shore. The air is crisp and cool, but 
there is very little wind. Everything is looking 
fresh and green. The train on the crossing makes 
enough noise for six, with a screeching of wheels 
and puffing of steam. The tug and dredge on the 
harbour are doing their share, too. All is a 
happy workday scene. I started in this morning 
to finish an essay I had begun the day before. 
After a little while, I opened the window, and 
the happy working sounds came into the room. I 

[130] 



THE LITTLE GIRL'S WORK 

could not finish that essay; I had to write some- 
thing about the grey happy day. 

On a grey day I delight in studying the sky, for 
it is always so brimming full of pictures. Pic- 
tures of every kind. It was on a grey day like 
this in the early Spring that "Cliff" made us see 
the great snow giants on the other side of the 
water, cleaning away all the snow and ice with 
great shovels and pick-axes. It was on a grey 
day that a Beech tree made me see that all the 
rocks, bugs, flowers, trees, and people are only 
one. These grey days that people find so much 
fault with, if they are not so important as the 
days when the sun cooks you, they are far 
more wonderful! One's imagination can wander 
through the whole universe on grey days. The 
pictures in the sky give one hints of other worlds, 
for there are so many different faces, different 
and strange lands and people. Far-off houses, 
kingdoms, castles, birds, beasts and everything 
else. Such wonderful things. Sometimes I see huge 
dragons, and then the cloud passes and the drag- 
ons go away. The sky is always changing. The 
pictures never last, but new ones come. 

A TALK 

What wonderful things come of little talks. 
I mean the right kind. Whole lives changed, per- 
haps by a half-hour's talk, or the same amount of 
time spent in reading. Man comes to a point in 
life, the half-way house, I have heard it called, 
when he either takes the right path which leads 
to the work that was made for him or he goes 
the wrong. Oftentimes a short talk from one who 

1 131 ] 



CHILD AND COUNTRY 



knows will set a man on the right track. One man 
goes the wrong way through many a danger and 
pain and suffering, and finally wakes up to the 
right, goes back, tells the others, and saves many 
from going the wrong way and passing through 
the same pain and suffering. 

At breakfast this morning we were talking 
about the universe from the angels around the 
throne to the little brown gnomes that work so 
hard, flower fairies, and wood and water nymphs 
and nixies. Such a strange, wild, delightful feel- 
ing comes over me when I hear about the little 
brown and green gnomes or think of them. One 
who does not know the fairies well would think 
they were all brothers, but it doesn't seem so to 
me. When I think of the green gnomes, a picture 
always comes of a whole lot of beautiful springy- 
looking bushes. I can always see the green 
gnomes through the bushes. They pay no atten- 
tion to me, but just go right on laughing and talk- 
ing by themselves. But when I think of brown 
gnomes a very different picture comes. It is 
Fall then, and leaves are on the ground and brown 
men are working so hard and so fast their hands 
and feet are just a blurr. They give you a smile 
if you truly love them. But that is all, for they 
are working hard. 

If one were well and could master his body in 
every way, he would be able to see plainly the 
white lines which connect everything together, and 
the crowns that are on the heads of the ones who 
deserve them. And one could see the history 
of a stone, a tree, or any old thing. 

What wonderful stories there would be in 
an old Beech tree that has stood in the same place 

[ 132] 



THE LITTLE GIRL'S WORK 

for more than a hundred years, and has seen all 
the wonders that came that way. Their upper 
branches are always looking up, and so at night 
they would see all the Sleep-bodies that pass that 
woods. The beech trees would make the old 
witches feel so good and happy by fanning them 
with their leaves and shading them that the 
witches would undo all the evil spells they had 
cast on people, and so many other wonderful 
stories would there be in a Beech tree's history. 



[ 188 ] 



12 

TEARING-DOWN SENTIMENT 



IT was mid-fall. Now, with the tiling, plant- 
ing, stone study and stable, the installation 
of water and trees and payments on the 
land, I concluded that I might begin on that 
winter and summer dream of a house — in about 
Nineteen Hundred and Twenty-three. . . . But 
I had been seeing it too clearly. So clear a 
thought literally draws the particles of matter to- 
gether. A stranger happened along and said: 

"When I get tired and discouraged again, I'm 
coming out here and take another look at your 
little stone study." 

I asked him in. He was eager to know who 
designed the shop. I told him that the different 
city attics I had worked in were responsible. He 
found this interesting. Finally I told him about 
the dream that I hoped some time to come true 
out yonder among the baby elms — the old father 
fireplace and all its young relations, the broad 
porches and the nine stone piers, the bedrooms 

[134] 



TEARING-DOWN SENTIMENT 

strung on a balcony under a roof of glass, the 
brick-paved patio below and the fountain in the 
centre. ... As he was a very good listener, I 
took another breath and finished the picture — to 
the sleeping porch that would overhang the bluff, 
casement-windows, red tiles that would dip down 
over the stonework, even to the bins for potatoes 
and apples in the basement. 

"That's very good," he said. "I'm an archi- 
tect of Chicago. I believe I can frame it up for 
you." 

When a thing happens like that, I invariably 
draw the suspicion that it was intended to be so. 
Anyway, I had to have plans. . . . When they 
came from Chicago, I shoved the date of build- 
ing ahead to Nineteen-Thirty, and turned with a 
sigh to the typewriter. . . . Several days after- 
ward there was a tap at the study door in the 
drowsiest part of the afternoon. A contractor and 
his friend, the lumberman, were interested to know 
if I contemplated building. Very positively I 
said not — so positively that the subject was 
changed. The next day I met the contractor, who 
said he was sorry to hear of my decision, since 
the lumberman had come with the idea of financ- 
ing the stone house, but was a bit delicate about 
it, the way I spoke. 

This was information of the most obtruding 
sort. . . . One of my well-trusted friends once 

[135] 



CHILD AND COUNTRY 



said to me, looking up from a work-bench in his 
own cellar: 

"When I started to build I went in debt just as 
far as they would let me." 

He had one of the prettiest places I ever saw — 
of a poor man's kind, and spent all the best hours 
of his life making it lovelier. 

"And it's all paid for?" I asked. 

He smiled. "No — not by a good deal less than 
half." 

"But suppose something should happen that you 
couldn't finish paying for it?" 

"Well, then I've had a mighty good time doing 
it for the other fellow." 

That was not to be forgotten. 

So I went down the shore with the lumberman, 
and we sat on the sand under a pine tree. . . . 
On the way home I arranged for excavation and 
the foundation masonry. . . . I'm not going to 
tell you how to build a house, because I don't 
know. I doubt if ever a house was built with a 
completer sense of detachment on the part of the 
nominal owner — at times. . . . When they con- 
sulted me, I referred to the dream which the archi- 
tect had pinned to matter in the form of many 
blue-prints — for a time. 

As the next Spring and the actual building ad- 
vanced, chaos came down upon me like the slow 
effects of a maddening drug. For two years I 
had ridden through the little town once or twice 

[136] 



TEARING-DOWN SENTIMENT 

a day for mail; and had learned the pleasure of 
nodding to the villagers — bankers, doctors, mer- 
chants, artisans, labourers and children. I had 
seldom entered stores or houses and as gently as 
possible refrained from touching the social system 
of the place. Our lives were very full on the 
Shore. 

There was a real pleasure to me in the village. 
Many great ones have fallen before the illusion of 
it. . . . There is a real pleasure to me in the vil- 
lage still, but different. 

Long ago, I went up into the north country 
and lived a while near a small Indian party on 
the shore of a pine-shadowed river. I watched 
their life a little. They knew fires and enjoyed 
tobacco. They feasted upon the hard, gamey bass, 
and sent members of their party to the fields for 
grains. Their children lived in the sun — a strange 
kind of enchantment over it all. I stood high on 
a rock above the river one evening across from 
the Indian camp, with a Canadian official who was 
a kind of white father to the remnant of the In- 
dian tribes in that part of the province. We 
talked together, and as we talked the sun went 
down. An old Indian arose on the bank opposite. 
In the stillness we heard him tap out the ashes 
of his pipe upon a stone. Then he came down 
like a dusky patriarch to the edge of the stream, 
stepped into his canoe and lifted the paddle. 

There was no sound from that, and the stream 

[137] 



CHILD AND COUNTRY 



was in the hush of evening and summer. He had 
seen us and was coming across to pay his respects 
to my companion. When he was half-way across, 
a dog detached himself from the outer circle of 
the fire and began to swim after the canoe. We 
saw the current swing him forward, and the lit- 
tle beast's adjustment to it. The canoe had come 
straight. It was now in the still water beneath, 
and the dog in the centre of the stream — the point 
of a rippling wedge. 

The Indian drew up his craft, and started to 
climb to us. The dog made the bank, shook him- 
self and followed upward, but not with a scam- 
per like a white man's dog, rather a silent keeping 
of distance. Just below us the Indian halted, 
turned, picked up with both hands a rock the size 
of a winter turnip and heaved it straight down at 
the beast's head. No word. 

The dog lurched sideways on the trail, so that 
the missile merely grazed him. We heard a sub- 
dued protest of one syllable, as he turned and went 
back. It was all uninteresting night to me now — 
beauty, picturesqueness, enchantment gone, with 
that repressed yelp. I didn't even rise from my 
seat on the rock. I had looked too close. That 
night the Canadian said : 

"The Indian race is passing out. They do not 
resist. I go from camp to camp in the Spring, and 
ask about the missing friends — young and old, 
even the young married people. They point — 

[138] 



TEARING-DOWN SENTIMENT 

back and upward — as if one pointed over his 
shoulder toward a hill just descended. . . . It's 
tuberculosis mainly. You see them here living a 
life designed to bring anything but a corpse back to 
health. When the winter comes they go to the 
houses, batten the windows, heap up the fires, and 
sit beside them, sleep and have their food beside 
them, twenty in a room. Before Spring, the 
touched ones cough, and are carried out. They 
seem to know that the race is passing. They do not 
resist — they do not care to live differently." 

Had it not been for that hurled rock which 
broke open the old Indian's nature for me, I 
should have preserved a fine picture perhaps, but 
it would not have been grounded upon wisdom, 
and therefore would have amounted to a mere 
sentiment. It was the same with the country- 
town, when the house-building forced me to look 
closely at the separate groups of workmen that 
detached themselves from the whole, and came to 
build the house. I think I can bring the meaning 
even clearer through another incident: 

. . . One of the young men here loved the sun- 
light on his shoulders so well — had such a natural 
love for the feel of light and air upon his bare 
flesh — that he almost attained that high charm of 
forgetting how well he looked. . . . The country 
people occasionally come down to the water on 
the Sabbath (from their homes back on the auto- 
mobile routes and the interurban lines), and for 

[139] 



CHILD AND COUNTRY 



what they do not get of the natural beauty of 
shore and bluff, I have a fine respect. However, 
they didn't miss the Temporary Mr. Pan. 

They complained that he was exposing himself, 
even that he was shameless. 

Now I am no worshipper of nudity. I'd like 
to be, but it disappoints in most cases. There is 
always a strain about an object that is conscious 
of itself — and that nudity which is unconscious 
of itself is either shameless, an inevitable point 
of its imperfection anatomically for the trained 
eye; or else it is touched with divinity and does 
not frequent these shores. 

The human body has suffered the fate of all 
flesh and plant-fibre that is denied light. A cer- 
tain vision must direct all growth — and vision 
requires light. The covered things are white- 
lidded and abortive, scrawny from struggle or 
bulbous from the feeding dream into which they 
are prone to sink. 

It will require centuries for the human race to 
outgrow the shames which have come to adhere 
to our character-structure from recent generations. 
We have brutalised our bodies with these 
thoughts. We associate women with veils and 
secrecy, but the trouble is not with them, and has 
not come from women, but from the male-ordering 
of women's affairs to satisfy his own ideas of pos- 
session and conservation. The whole cycle of 
human reproduction is a man-arrangement accord- 

[ 140] 



TEARING-DOWN SENTIMENT 

ing to present standards, and every process is de- 
structively bungled. However, that's a life-work, 
that subject. 

In colour, texture and contour, the thoughts 
of our ancestors have debased our bodies, organi- 
cally and as they are seen. Nudity is not beau- 
tiful, and does not play sweetly upon our minds 
because of this heritage. The human body is as- 
sociated with darkness, and the place of this asso- 
ciation in our minds is of corresponding darkness. 

The young man and I talked it over. We de- 
cided that it would be a thankless task for him to 
spend the summers in ardent endeavour to educate 
the countryside by browning his back in public. 
That did not appeal to us as a fitting life-task; 
moreover, his project would frequently be inter- 
rupted by the town marshal. As a matter of 
truth, one may draw most of the values of the 
actinic rays of the sun through thin white cloth- 
ing; and if one has not crushed his feet into a 
revolting mass in pursuit of the tradesmen, he 
may go barefooted a little while each day on his 
own grass-plot without shocking the natives or 
losing his credit at the bank. The real reason 
for opening this subject is to express (and be very 
sure to express without hatred) certain facts in 
the case of the countryside which complained. 

They are villagers and farm-people who live 
with Mother Nature without knowing her. They 
look into the body of Nature, but never see her 

[141] 



CHILD AND COUNTRY 



face to face. The play of light and the drive of 
intelligence in her eyes is above the level of their 
gaze, or too bright. Potentially they have all 
the living lights — the flame immortal, but it is 
turned low. It does not glorify them, as men or 
parents or workmen. It does not inspire them to 
Questing — man's real and most significant busi- 
ness. They do not know that which is good or 
evil in food, in music, colour, fabric, books, in 
houses, lands or faith. They live in a low, lazy 
rhythm and attract unto themselves inevitably ob- 
jects of corresponding vibration. One observes 
this in their children, in their schools and most 
pathetically in their churches. They abide dimly 
in the midst of their imperfections, but with tragic 
peace. When their children revolt, they meet on 
every hand the hideous weight of matter, the pres- 
sure of low established forces, and only the more 
splendid of these young people have the integ- 
rity of spirit to rise above the resistance. 

As for the clothing that is worn, they would do 
better if left suddenly naked as a people, and 
without preconceptions, were commanded to find 
some covering for themselves. As herds, they 
have fallen into a descending arc of usage, under 
the inevitable down-pull of trade. Where the 
vibrations of matter are low, its responsive move- 
ment is gregarian rather than individual. The 
year around, these people wear clothing, — woollen 
pants and skirts, which if touched with an iron, 

[142] 



TEARING-DOWN SENTIMENT 

touched with sunlight, rain or any medium that 
arouses the slumbering quantities, the adjacent 
nostril is offended. 

They are heavy eaters of meat the year round. 
They slay their pets with as little concern as they 
gather strawberries. Their ideas of virtue and 
legitimacy have to do with an ecclesiastical form, 
as ancient as Nineveh and as effaced in meaning. 
They accept their children, as one pays a price 
for pleasure ; and those children which come from 
their stolen pleasures are either murdered or 
marked with shame. Their idea of love is made 
indefinite by desire, and their love of children has 
to do with the sense of possession. 

They are not significant men in their own fields ; 
rarely a good mason, a good carpenter, a good 
farmer. The many have not even found the secret 
of order and unfolding from the simplest task. 
The primary meaning of the day's work in its re- 
lation to life and blessedness is not to be con- 
ceived by them. They are taught from child- 
hood that first of all work is for bread; that 
bread perishes; therefore one must pile up as he 
may the where-with to purchase the passing bread ; 
that bread is bread and the rest a gamble. . . . 
They answer to the slow loop waves which en- 
fold the many in amusement and opinion, in suspi- 
cion and cruelty and half-truth. To all above, 
they are as if they were not; mediocre men, static 
in spiritual affairs, a little pilot-burner of vision 

[ 143 ] 



CHILD AND COUNTRY 



flickering from childhood, but never igniting their 
true being, nor opening to them the one true way 
which each man must go alone, before he begins 
to be erect in other than bone and sinew. 

They cover their bodies — but they do not cover 
their faces nor their minds nor their souls. And 
this is the marvel, they are not ashamed! They 
reveal the emptiness of their faces and the dark- 
ness of their minds without complaining to each 
other or to the police. From any standpoint of re- 
ality, the points of view of the many need only 
to be expressed to reveal their abandonment. . . . 
But this applies to crowds anywhere, to the world- 
crowd, whose gods to-day are trade and patriotism 
and motion-photography. 

The point is, we cannot look back into the cen- 
tres of the many for our ideals. There is no varia- 
tion to the law that all beauty and progress is 
ahead. Moreover, a man riding through a village 
encounters but the mask of its people. We have 
much practice through life in bowing to each 
other. There is a psychology about greetings 
among human kind that is deep as the pit. When 
the thing known as Ignorance is established in a 
community, one is foolish to rush to the conclu- 
sion that the trouble is merely an unlettered thing. 

No one has idealised the uneducated mind with 

more ardour than the one who is expressing these 

studies of life. But I have found that the mind 

that has no quest, that does not begin its search 

[ 144 ] 



TEARING-DOWN SENTIMENT 

among the world's treasures from a child, is a 
mind that is just as apt to be aggressive in its 
small conceptions as the most capacious and 
sumptuously furnished, and more rigorous in its 
treatment of dependents. I have found that the 
untrained mind is untrained in the qualities of 
appreciation, is not cleanly, nor workmanlike, nor 
spiritual, nor generous, nor tolerant; that the very 
fundamentals of its integrity will hurt you; that 
it talks much and is not ashamed. 

All literature has overdone the dog-like fidel- 
ity of simple minds. The essence of loyalty of 
man to man is made of love-capacity and under- 
standing — and these are qualities that come from 
evolution of the soul just as every other fine thing 
comes. 

We perceive the old farmer on his door-step in 
the evening — love and life-lines of labour upon 
him; we enjoy his haleness and laughter. . . . 
But that is the mask. His mind and its every 
attribute of consciousness is designed to smother 
an awakened soul. You have to bring God to him 
in his own terminology, or he will fight you, and 
believe in his heart that he is serving his God. 
His generation is moving slowly now, yet if his 
sons and daughters quicken their pace, he is filled 
with torments of fear or curses them for straying. 

I would not seem ill-tempered. I have long 
since healed from the chaos and revelations of 
building. It brought me a not too swift review 

[145] 



CHILD AND COUNTRY 



of life as I had met it afield and in the cities 
for many years. The fact that one little contract 
for certain interior installations was strung over 
five months, and surprised me with the possi- 
bilities of inefficiency and untruth, is long since 
forgotten. The water runs. Ten days after peace 
was established here, all my wounds were healing 
by first intention; and when I saw the carpenters 
at work on a new contract the day after they left 
me, the pity that surged through my breast was 
strangely poignant, and it was for them. The 
conduct of their days was a drive through the 
heaviest and most stubborn of materials, an arriv- 
ing at something like order against the grittiest 
odds, and they must do it again and again. There 
is none to whom I cannot bow in the evening — 
but the idealisation of the village lives is changed 
and there is knowledge. 

I had been getting too comfortable. One can- 
not do his service in the world and forget its fun- 
damentals. We have to love before we can serve, 
but it is fatuous to love blindly. The things that 
we want are ahead. The paths behind do not 
contain them; the simplicity of peasants and 
lowly communities is not merely unlettered. One 
does not need to deal with one small town; it 
is everywhere. The ways of the crowds are small 
ways. We wrong ourselves and bring imperfec- 
tion to our tasks when we forget that. We love 
the Indian crossing the stream in the great and 

[146] 



TEARING-DOWN SENTIMENT 

gracious night — but God pity the Indian's dog. 
We must look close at life, and not lie to our- 
selves, because our ways are cushioning a little. 

All idealism that turns back must suffer the fate 
of mere sentiments. We must know the stuff the 
crowds are made of, if we have a hand in bring- 
ing in the order and beauty. You have heard 
men exclaim: 

"How noble are the simple-minded — how sweet 
the people of the Countryside — how inevitable 
and unerring is the voice of the people!" As a 
matter of truth, unless directed by some strong 
man's vision, the voice of the people has never 
yet given utterance to constructive truth ; and the 
same may be said of those who cater to the public 
taste in politics or the so-called arts. The man 
who undertakes to give the people what the peo- 
ple want is not an artist or a true leader of any 
dimension. He is a tradesman and finds his place 
in his generation. 

The rising workman in any art or craft learns 
by suffering that all good is ahead and not else- 
where; that he must dare to be himself even if 
forced to go hungry for that honour ; that he must 
not lose his love for men, though he must lose 
his illusions. Sooner or later, when he is ready, 
one brilliant little fact rises in his consciousness — 
one that comes to stay, and around which all fu- 
ture thinking must build itself. It is this : 

When one lifts the mask from any crowd, com- 

[147] 



CHILD AND COUNTRY 



monness is disclosed in every change and move- 
ment of personality. At the same time, the crowds 
of common people are the soil of the future, a 
splendid mass potentially, the womb of every 
heroism and masterpiece to be. 

All great things must come from the people, 
because great leaders of the people turn their pas- 
sionate impregnation of idealism upon them. 
First the dreamer dreams — and then the people 
make it action. . . . 

What we see that hurts us so as workmen is 
but the unfinished picture, the back of the tapestry. 

To be worth his spiritual salt, the artist, any 
artist, must turn every force of his conceiving into 
that great restless Abstraction, the many; he must 
plunge whole-heartedly in the doing, but cut him- 
self loose from the thing done; at least, he must 
realise that what he is willing to give could not 
be bought. . . . When he is quite ready, there 
shall arise for him, out of the Abstraction, some- 
thing finished ; something as absolutely his own as 
the other half of his circle. 

The one relentless and continual realisation 
which drives home to a man who has any vision 
of the betterment of the whole, is the low-grade 
intelligence of the average human being. Every 
man who has ever worked for a day out of himself 
has met this fierce and flogging truth. The per- 
sonal answer to this, which the workman finally 
makes, may be of three kinds : He may desert his 

[148] 



TEARING-DOWN SENTIMENT 

vision entirely and return to operate among the 
infinite small doors of the many — which is cow- 
ardice and the grimmest failure. He may aban- 
don the many and devote himself to the few who 
understand; and this opens the way to the subtler 
and more powerful devils which beset and betray 
human understanding, for we are not heroically 
moulded by those who love us but by the grinding 
of those who revile. If a key does not fit, it must 
be ground ; and to be ground, its wards made true 
and sharp, it must be held somehow in a vise. The 
grinding from above will not bite otherwise. So 
it is with the workman. He must fix himself first 
in the knowledge of the world. . . . 

The workman of the true way abandons neither 
his vision nor the world. Somehow to impreg- 
nate the world with his particular vision — all good 
comes from that. In a word, the workman either 
plays to world entirely, which is failure; to his 
elect entirely, which is apt to be a greater failure ; 
or, intrenched in the world and thrilling with as- 
piration, he may exert a levitating influence upon 
the whole, just as surely as wings beat upward. 
There are days of blindness, and the years are 
long, but in this latest struggle a man forgets 
himself, which is the primary victory. 

The real workman then — vibrating between 
compassion and contempt — his body vised in the 
world, his spirit struggling upward, performs his 
task. When suddenly freed, he finds that he has 

[149] 



CHILD AND COUNTRY 



done well. If one is to have wings, and by that I 
don't mean feathers but the intrinsic levitating 
force of the spiritual life, be very sure they must 
be grown here, and gain their power of pinion in 
the struggle to lift matter. 



[150] 



13 
NATURAL CRUELTY 



IN dealing with the young, especially with 
little boys, one of the first things to estab- 
lish is gentleness to animals. Between the 
little boy and the grown man all the states 
of evolution are vaguely reviewed, as they are, 
in fact, in that more rapid and mysterious passage 
between conception and birth. Young nations 
pass through the same phases, and some of them 
are abominable. The sense of power is a dan- 
gerous thing. The child feels it in his hands, and 
the nation feels it in its first victory. ... In the 
Chapel during a period of several days we talked 
about the wonder of animals (the little boys of the 
house present) and the results were so interesting 
that I put together some of the things discussed 
in the following form, calling the paper Adven- 
tures in Cruelty: 

As a whole, the styles in cruelty are changing. 
Certain matters of charity as we used to regard 

[151] 



CHILD AND COUNTRY 



them are vulgar now. I remember when a great 
sign, The Home of the Friendless, used to 
stare obscenely at thousands of city school 
children, as we passed daily through a certain 
street. Though it is gone now, something of the 
curse of it is still upon the premises. I always 
think of what a certain observer said : 

"You would not think the Christ had ever come 
to a world, where men could give such a name to 
a house of love-babies." 

I remember, too, when there formerly appeared 
from time to time on the streets, during the long 
summers, different green-blue wagons. The driv- 
ers were different, too — I recall one was a hunch- 
back. These outfits formed one of the fascinat- 
ing horrors of our bringing-up — the fork, the 
noose, the stray dog tossed into a maddened pulp 
of stray dogs, the door slammed, and no word 
at all from the driver — nothing we could build 
on, or learn his character by. He was a part 
of the law, and we were taught then that the law 
was everlastingly right, that we must grind our 
characters against it. . . . But the green-blue 
wagons are gone, and the Law has come to con- 
form a bit with the character of youth. 

The time is not long since when we met our 
adventures in cruelty alone — no concert of en- 
lightened citizens on these subjects — and only 
the very few had found the flaw in the gospel 
that God had made the animals, and all the 

[152] 



NATURAL CRUELTY 



little animals, for delectation and service of man. 
Possibly there is a bit of galvanic life still in 
the teaching, but it cannot be said to belong to the 
New Age. 

Economic efficiency has altered many styles for 
the better. Formerly western drovers used to 
drive their herds into the brush for the winters. 
The few that the winter and the wolves didn't get 
were supposed to be hardy enough to demand a 
price. It was found, however, that wintering-out 
cost the beasts more in vitality than they would 
spend in seven years of labour ; that the result was 
decrepit colts and stringy dwarfs for the beef 
market. Also there was agitation on the subject, 
and the custom passed. City men who owned 
horses in large numbers found their efficiency 
brought to a higher notch at the sacrifice of a 
little more air and food, warmth and rest. There 
is a far-drive to this appeal, and there are those 
who believe that it will see us through to the 
millennium. 

A woman told this story : "When I was a child 
in the country there was an old cow that we all 
knew and loved. She was red and white like 
Stevenson's cow that ate the meadow flowers. 
Her name was Mary — Mr. Devlin's Mary. The 
Devlin children played with us, and they were 
like other children in every way, only a little 
fatter and ruddier perhaps. The calves disap- 
peared annually (one of the mysteries) and the 

[153] 



CHILD AND COUNTRY 



Devlin children were brought up on Mary's milk. 
It wasn't milk, they said, but pure cream. We 
came to know Mary, because she was always on 
the roadside — no remote back-pastures for her. 
She loved the children and had to know what 
passed. We used to deck her with dandelions, 
and often just as we were getting the last circlet 
fastened, old Mary would tire of the game and 
walk sedately out of the ring — just as she would 
when a baby calf had enough or some novice had 
been milking too long. I have been able to un- 
derstand how much the Hindus think of their 
cattle just by thinking of Mary. For years we 
passed her — to and from school. It was said 
that she could negotiate any gate or lock. 

"Well, on one Spring morning, as we walked by 
the Devlin house, we saw a crated wagon with 
a new calf inside, and they were tying Mary be- 
hind. She was led forth. I remember the whites 
of her eyes and her twisted head. Only that, 
in a kind of sickening and pervading blackness. 
The calf cried to her, and Mary answered, and 
thus they passed. . . . 'But she is old. She dried 
up for a time last summer,' one of the Devlin chil- 
dren said. 

"Devlin wasn't a bad man, a respected church- 
man. ... I spoke to certain grown-ups, but did 
not get the sense of tragedy that was mine. No 
one criticised Devlin. It was the custom, they 
said. . . . Even the butcher had heard of old 

[154] 



NATURAL CRUELTY 



Mary. . . . You see how ungrippable, how ab- 
stract the tragedy was for a child — but you never 
can know what it showed me of the world. None 
of us who wept that day ate meat for many days. 
I have not since. I cannot." 

Her story reminded me sharply of a recent per- 
sonal experience. I had been thinking of buying a 
cow. It appears that there are milch-cows and 
beef-cows. Country dealers prefer a blend, as 
you shall see. I said I wanted butter and milk, 
intimating the richer the better; also I wanted a 
front-yard cow, if possible. . . . There was a 
gentle little Jersey lady that had eyes the children 
would see fairies in 

"Yes, she's a nice heifer," the man said, "but 
now I'm a friend of yours " 

"I appreciate that. Isn't she well?" 

"Yes, sound as a trivet." 

"Agoodyielder?" 

"All of that." 

"What's the matter?" 

"Well, a cow is like a peach-tree, she doesn't 
last forever. After the milktime, there isn't much 
left for beef " 

"But I don't want to eat her." 

"But as an investment — you see, that's where 
the Jerseys fall down — they don't weigh much at 
the butcher's." 

The styles change more slowly in the country. 
... I found this good economy so prevalent as 

[155] 



CHILD AND COUNTRY 

to be rather high for humour. In fact, that's 
exactly why you can't get "grand" stakes in the 
country. ... I related the episode to a man in- 
terested in the prevention of cruelty. He said : 

"Don't blame it all on the country. I saw one 
of those butcher's abominations in a city street 
yesterday — cart with crate, new calf inside, old 
moaning mammy dragged after to the slaughter — 
a very interesting tumbril, but she hadn't con- 
spired against the government. For a year she 
had given the best of her body to nourish that 
little bewildered bit of veal — and now we were to 
eat what was left of her. . . . Also I passed 
through a certain railway yard of a big city last 
holidays. You recall the zero weather? Tier on 
tier of crated live chickens were piled there await- 
ing shipment — crushed into eight-inch crates, so 
that they could not lift their heads. Poe pic- 
tured an atrocious horror like that — a man being 
held in a torture-cell in such a position that he 
could not stand erect. It almost broke a man's 
nerve, to say nothing of his neck, just to read 
about it. ... I had seen this thing before — yet 
never as this time. Queer how these things hap- 
pen ! A man must see a thing like that just right, 
in full meaning, and then tell it again and again 
— until enough others see, to make it dangerous 
to ship that way. I got the idea then, 'Suppose a 
man would make it his life-work to change those 
crates — to make those crates such a stench and 

[156] 



NATURAL CRUELTY 



abomination, that poultry butchers would not dare 
use them. What a worthy life work that would 
be !' . . . And then I thought, 'Why leave it for 
the other fellow?' . . . The personal relation is 
everything," he concluded. 

There was something round and equable about 
this man's talk, and about his creeds. He was "out 
for the chickens," as he expressed it. This task 
came to him and he refused to dodge. Perhaps he 
will be the last to see the big thing that he is doing, 
for he is in the ruck of it. And then very often 
a man sets out to find a passage to India and gets 
a New World. In any case, to put four inches 
on the chicken-crates of America is very much a 
man's job, when one considers the relation of tariff 
to bulk in freight and express. 

Yet there is efficiency even to that added ex- 
penditure — a very thrilling one, if the public 
would just stop once and think. If you have ever 
felt the heat of anger rising in your breast, given 
way to it, and suffered the lassitude and self-hatred 
of reaction, it will be easy for you to believe the 
demonstrable truth that anger is a poison. Fear 
is another; and the breaking down of tissue as a 
result of continued torture is caused by still an- 
other poison. The point is that we consume these 
poisons. The government is very active in pre- 
venting certain diseased meats from reaching our 
tables, but these of fear, rage, blood-madness and 

[157] 



CHILD AND COUNTRY 



1 as t-days-of -agony are subtler diseases which have 
so far had little elucidation. 

Though this is not a plea for vegetarianism, 
one should not be allowed to forget too long the 
tens of thousands of men and boys who are en- 
gaged in slaughtering — nor the slaughtered. . . . 
Long ago there was a story of an opera cloak for 
which fifty birds of paradise gave their life and 
bloom. It went around the world, that story, and 
there is much beauty in the wild to-day because 
of it. The trade in plumes has suffered. Styles 
change — but there is much Persian lamb still 
worn. Perhaps in good time the Messiah of the 
lambs will come forth, as the half- frozen chickens 
found theirs in the city yards. 

The economical end will not cover all the sins; 
that is, the repression of cruelty on an efficiency 
basis. Repressed cruelty will not altogether clear 
the air, nor laws. A true human heart cannot 
find its peace, merely because cruelty is concealed. 
There was a time when we only hoped to spare 
the helpless creatures a tithe of their suffering, 
but that will not suffice now. A clean-up is de- 
manded and the forces are at work to bring it 
about. 

Formerly it was granted that man's rise was 
mainly on the necks of his beasts, but that concep- 
tion is losing ground. Formerly, it was enough 
for us to call attention on the street to the whip 
of a brutal driver, but it has been found that 

[158] 



NATURAL CRUELTY 



more is required. You may threaten him with 
the police, even with lynching; you may frighten 
him away from his manhandling for the moment 
— but in some alley, he is alone with his horse 
afterward. His rage has only been flamed by re- 
sistance met. It is he who puts the poor creature 
to bed. 

The fear of punishment has always been in- 
effectual in preventing crime, for the reason that 
the very passion responsible for the crime masters 
the fear. ... It is difficult to discuss these rav- 
ages on a purely physical basis, for the ramifica- 
tions of cruelty are cumulatively intense, the 
higher they are carried. Ignorance is not alone 
the lack of knowing things; it is the coarseness 
of fibre which resists all the fairer and finer bits 
of human reality. Just so long as men fail to 
master the animals of which they are composed, 
the poor beasts about them will be ha r rowine r ly 
treated. 

So there are many arms to the campaign. Spe- 
cific facts must be supplied for the ignorant, an 
increasingly effective effort toward the general 
education of the public; but the central energy 
must be spent in lifting the human heart into 
warmth and sensitiveness. 

On a recent January night, an animal welfare 
society had a call to one of the city freight-yards 
where a carload of horses was said to be freezing 
to death. It was not a false alarm. The agents 

[159] 



CHILD AND COUNTRY 

knew that these were not valuable horses. Good 
stock is not shipped in this precarious fashion. 
It was a load of the feeble and the aged and 
maimed — with a few days' work left in them, if 
continuously whipped, gathered from the fields 
and small towns by buyers who could realise a 
dollar or two above the price of the hide — to meet 
the demand of the alley-minded of the big city. 
The hard part is that it costs just as much pain 
for such beasts to freeze to death, in the early 
stages, at least. The investment would have been 
entirely spoiled had it been necessary to furnish 
blankets for the shipment. 

The public reading a story of this adventure, 
remarks, "Why, I thought all that was stopped 
long ago " 

Just as underwriters will gamble on anything, 
even to insure a ship that is to run a blockade, if 
the premium is right — so will a certain element 
of trade take a chance on shipping such horses, 
until the majority of people are awake and re- 
sponsive to the impulses of humanity. It isn't 
being sanctified to be above cruelty; it is only the 
beginning of manhood proper. 

The newspapers and all publicity methods are 
of great service, but the mightiest effort is to lift 
the majority of the people out of the lethargy 
which renders them immune to pangs of the daily 
spectacle. The remarkable part is that the people 

[160] 



NATURAL CRUELTY 



are ready, but they expect the stimulus to come 
from without instead of from within. 

Custom is a formidable enemy — that herd in- 
stinct of a people which causes it to accept as 
right the methods of the many. Farmers to-day 
everywhere are following the manner of Devlin; 
yet the story brings out the lineaments of most 
shocking and unforgetable cruelty. How can one 
expect effective revulsion on the part of a band of 
medical students when the bearded elders bend 
peering over their vivisections'? What are chil- 
dren to do when their parents shout mad-dog and 
run for clubs and pitch-forks at the passing of a 
thirst- frenzied brute; or the teamster when the 
blacksmith does not know the anatomy of a horse's 
foot 1 ? Ignorance is the mother of cruelty, and 
custom is the father. 

The great truths that will fall in due time upon 
all the sciences — upon astronomy, pathology, even 
upon criminology — are the results of flashes of 
intuition. Again and again this is so. The ma- 
terial mind is proof against intuition, and of neces- 
sity cruel. It keeps on with its burnings, its lanc- 
ings, its brandings, its collections of skulls and 
cadavers, until its particular enlightener appears. 
The dreadful thing to consider is that each depart- 
ment of cruelty brings its activity up into a fright- 
ful state of custom and action, before the exposures 
begin. 

Which brings us to the very pith of the en- 

[161] 



CHILD AND COUNTRY 



deavour: The child is ready to change — that is 
the whole story. The child is fluid, volatile, recep- 
tive to reason. In all our world-life there is noth- 
ing so ostentatiously or calamitously amiss as the 
ignorance and customs of our relation to children. 
The child will change in a day. The child is 
ready for the beauty and the mystery of mercy. 
The prison-house must not be closed to sensitive- 
ness and intuition. If that can be prevented the 
problem of animal welfare is solved, and in the 
end we will find that much more has been done for 
our children than for the animals. So often again 
we set out to discover the passage to India and 
reach the shores of a New World. 



[162] 



CHILDREN CHANGE 



THE first of the young men to come to 
Stonestudy followed an attraction 
which has never been quite definite to 
me. He was strongly educated, having 
studied art and life at Columbia and other places. 
His chief interest at first appeared to be in the 
oriental philosophy which he alleged to have found 
in my work. After that he intimated that he 
aspired to write. The second young man came 
from Dakota, also a college-bred. A teacher there 
wrote to me about him. I looked at some of his 
work, and I found in it potentialities of illimitable 
promise. I was not so excited as I would have 
been had I not met this discovery in other cases 
from the generation behind us. Their fleets are 
upon every sea. 

The need of a living was somehow arranged. I 
worked with the two a while in the evening on 
short manuscript matters. In fact, the dollar-end 

has not pinched so far; and they help a while in 

[163] 



CHILD AND COUNTRY 



the garden in the afternoons, designating the 
period, Track, as they named the little class after 
mid-day, Chapel. At first, I was in doubt as to 
whether they really belonged to the class. It was 
primarily designed for the younger minds — and I 
was unwilling to change that. 

You would think it rather difficult — I know I 
did — to bring the work in one class for ages rang- 
ing from eleven to twice that. I said to the young 
men: 

"Of course it is their hour. I don't want to bore 
you, but come if you like. Be free to discontinue, 
if what you get isn't worth the time. As for me — 
the young ones come first, and I am not yet ready 
for two classes." 

They smiled. About a week later, they came 
in a half-hour late. It happened we had been 
having an exceptionally good hour. 

"I would rather have you not come, if you can- 
not come on time," I said. 

They sat down without any explanation. It 
was long afterward that I heard they had been 
busy about a trunk; that their delay had been 
unavoidable in getting it through customs, a bar- 
barous and war-making inconvenience which can- 
not flourish much longer. And one day we went 
out into the garden together for the hoes, and the 
Dakota young man said : 

"Chapel is the best hour of the day " 

He said more, and it surprised me from one 

[ 164 ] 



CHILDREN CHANGE 



who talked so rarely. This younger generation, as 
I have said, has an impediment of speech. It is 
not glib nor explanatory. . . . One of the hap- 
piest things that has ever befallen me is the spirit 
of the Chapel. It happened that The Abbot 
brought in a bit of work that repeated a rather 
tiresome kind of mis-technicality — an error, I had 
pointed out to him before. I took him to task — 
lit into him with some force upon his particular 
needs of staying down a little each day — or the 
world would never hear his voice. ... In the 
silence I found that the pain was no more his 
than the others in the room — that they were all 
sustaining him, their hearts like a hammock for 
him, their minds in a tensity for me to stop. . . . 
I did. The fact is, I choked at the discovery. . . . 
They were very far from any competitive ideal. 
They were one — and there's something immortal 
about that. It gave me the glimpse of what the 
world will some time be. There is nothing that so 
thrills as the many made one. . . . Power bulks 
even from this little group; the sense of self flees 
away; the glow suffuses all things — and we rise 
together — a gold light in the room that will come 
to all the world. 

It is worth dwelling upon — this spirit of the 
Chapel. . . . The war has since come to the 
world, and many who are already toiling for the 
reconstruction write to the Study from time to 
time — from different parts of the world. I read 

[165] 



CHILD AND COUNT P. Y 



the class a letter recently from a young woman in 
England. It was like the cry of a soul, and as I 
looked up from the paper, a glow was upon their 
faces. A group of workers in the Western coast 
send us their letters and actions from time to time, 
and another group from Washington. All these 
are placed before the Chapel kindred for inspira- 
tion and aliment. 

"As this is the time for you to be here," I said 
one day, "the time shall come for you to go forth. 
All that you are bringing to yourselves from these 
days must be tried out in the larger fields of 
the world. You will meet the world in your 
periods of maturity and genius — at the time of the 
world's greatest need. That is a clue to the splen- 
did quality of the elect of the generation to which 
you belong. You are watching the end of the 
bleakest and most terrible age — the breaking down 
at last of an iron age. It has shattered into the ter- 
rible disorder of continental battle-fields. But 
you belong to the builders, whose names will be 
called afterward." 

... I have come to the Chapel torn and trou- 
bled ; and the spirit of it has calmed and restored 
me. They are so ready; they listen and give. . . . 
We watch the world tearing down — from this 
quietude. We have no country but God's country. 
Though we live in the midst of partisanship and 

[166] 



CHILDREN CHANGE 



madness, we turn our eyes ahead and build our 
thoughts upon the New Age — just children. 

. . . For almost a year I had been preparing a 
large rose-bed — draining, under-developing the 
clay, softening the humus. The bed must be de- 
veloped first. The world is interested only in the 
bloom, in the fruit, but the florists talk together 
upon their work before the plants are set. The 
roses answered — almost wonderfully. They 
brought me the old romance of France and mem- 
ories of the Ireland that has vanished. This point 
was touched upon in the Foreword — how in the 
joy of the roses that answered months after the 
labour was forgotten, it suddenly occurred what 
a marvel is the culture of the human soul. 

The preparation of the mind is paramount. Not 
a touch of care or a drop of richness is lost; not 
an ideal fails. These young minds bring me the 
thoughts I have forgotten — fruited thoughts from 
their own boughs. They are but awakened. They 
are not different from other children. Again and 
again it has come to me from the wonderful un- 
foldings under my eyes, that for centuries the 
world has been maiming its children — that only 
those who were wonderfully strong could escape, 
and become articulate as men. 

Again, the splendid fact is that children change. 
You touch their minds and they are not the same 
the next day. 

... I do not see how preachers talk Sunday 

[167] 



CHILD AND COUNTRY 

after Sunday to congregations, which, though edi- 
fied, return to their same little questionable ways. 
There are people in the cults who come to teachers 
and leaders to be ignited. They swim away with 
the new message; they love it and are lifted, but 
it subsides within them. In their depression and 
darkness they seek the outer ignition again. We 
must be self-starters. ... I once had a class of 
men and women in the city. We met weekly and 
some of the evenings were full of delight and 
aspiration. For two winter seasons we carried on 
the work. After a long summer we met together 
and even in the joy of reunion, I found many 
caught in their different conventions — world ways, 
the obvious and the temporal, as if we had never 
breathed the open together. It was one of the 
great lessons to me — to deal with the younger 
generation. I sometimes think the younger the 
better. I have recalled again and again the sig- 
nificance of the Catholic priests' saying — "Give 
us your child until he is seven only " 

In one year I have been so accustomed to see 
young people change — to watch the expression of 
their splendid inimitable selves, that it comes like 
a grim horror how the myriads of children are lit- 
erally sealed in the world. 

We believe that God is in everything; that we 
would be fools, or at best innocuous angels if there 
were not evil in the world for us to be ground 
upon and master. We are held and refined be- 

[168] 



CHILDREN CHANGE 

tween the two attractions — one of the earth and 
the other a spiritual uplift. We believe that 
the sense of Unity is the first deep breath of the 
soul, the precursor of illumination ; that the great 
Brotherhood conception must come from this 
sense. Next to this realisation, we believe that 
man's idea of time is an illusion, that immortality 
is here and now; that nothing can happen to us 
that is not the right good thing; that the farther 
and faster we go, the more beautiful and subtle is 
the system of tests which are played upon us; that 
our first business in life is to reconcile these tests to 
our days and hours, to understand and regard 
them from the standpoint of an unbroken life, not 
as a three-score-and-ten adventure here. You 
would think these things hard to understand — 
they are not. The littlest ones have it — the two 
small boys of seven and nine, who have not regu- 
larly entered the Chapel. 

The little girl brought us some of these thoughts 
in her own way, and without title : 

The soul is very old. It has much to say, if one 
learns to listen. If one makes his body fine, he 
can listen better. And if one's body is fine from 
the beginning, it is because he has learned to listen 
before. All that we have learned in past ages is 
coiled within. The good a man does is all kept 
in the soul, and all his lessons. The little fairy 
people that played around him and told him queer 

[169] 



CHILD AND COUNTRY 

things when he was first a rock, then flowers and 
trees, are still printed in his soul. The difficult 
thing is to bring them out into the world, to tell 
them. By listening, in time, the soul's wonderful 
old voice will tell us all things, so that we can 
write and tell about them. Every thought we try 
so hard to get, is there. It is like losing track of 
a thimble. If you know it is somewhere and you 
need it badly enough, you will find it. 

The brain cannot get for us a mighty thought. 
The brain can only translate soul-talk into words. 
It was not the brain which told Fichte, a long, long 
time ago, that Germany was going wrong and that 
he should fix it by telling them the right way to 
go; but it was the brain that told the people not 
to listen to him, but to go on just as they had 
been. 

It is always the brain that makes one add col- 
umns correctly, and learn the number tables and 
how to spell words. But these will come them- 
selves, without a life spent studying them. After 
a life of this kind, the soul is not a bit farther 
ahead than it was when coming into the world in 
the body of a baby. 

The brain will also show one the way to make 
money, perhaps lots of it, the most terrible thing 
that can happen to you, unless, as Whitman says, 
u you shall scatter with lavish hand all that you 
earn or achieve." 



[170]' 



15 

A MAN'S OWN 



THE first and general objection to the 
plan made much of here, that of edu- 
cating young minds in small classes with 
a design toward promoting the individ- 
ual expression, is that the millions of our rising 
race could not be handled so; in fact, that it is a 
physical and economic impossibility. 

The second objection is that I have in a sense 
called my own to me ; that the great mass of chil- 
dren could not be ignited except by an orderly and 
imperceptible process, either from within or with- 
out. In fact, it has been said repeatedly that I 
deal with extraordinary soil. I wish to place the 
situation here even more intimately, in order to 
cover these and other objections, for I believe they 
are to be covered in this book. 

... In the last days of the building here, when 
the fireplace of the study was the only thing we 
had in the way of a kitchen-range, when the places 
of books became repositories for dishes, and the 

[171] 



CHILD AND COUNTRY 



desk a dining-table — the little afternoon Chapel 
was of course out of the question for some weeks. 
... I used to see The Abbot (longer-legged each 
week) making wide circles against the horizon, his 
head turned this way, like a bird's in flight. And 
The Valley-Road Girl, whom I met rarely, shook 
her head at me once, though I had to look close to 
catch it. The little girl declared, with a heart- 
broken look, that the Chapel would never be the 
same again after cabbage had been cooked there. 

"But it was a wonderful young cabbage from 
the garden," I said. "And then the Chapel cannot 
be hurt by being so differently valuable just now. 
It is seeing us through these hard days." 

But I missed something through these days ; the 
fact of the matter is, my thoughts were not so 
buoyant as usual through the last half of the days, 
nor nearly so decent. Something I missed deeply, 
and moved about as one does trying to recall a 
fine dream. The little group had given me a joy 
each day that I hadn't realised adequately. That 
was the secret. I had been refreshed daily as a 
workman; learned each day things that I didn't 
know ; and because of these hours, I had expressed 
better in the writing part of the life, the things I 
did know. Certainly they taught me the needs of 
saying exactly what I meant. All of which to 
suggest again that teaching is a mutual service. 
Just here I want to reprint the first and last 
thought, so far as I see it, as regards the first ob- 

[ 172] 



man's own 



jection: These paragraphs are taken from a for- 
mer essay on Work, published in the book called 
Midstream. 

"Work and life to me mean the same thing. 
Through work in my case, a transfer of conscious- 
ness was finally made from animalism to a certain 
manhood. This is the most important transaction 
in the world. Our hereditary foes are the priests 
and formalists who continue to separate a man's 
work from his religion. A working idea of God 
comes to the man who has found his work — and 
the splendid discovery invariably follows, that his 
work is the best expression of God. All education 
that does not first aim to find the student's life- 
work is vain, often demoralising; because, if the 
student's individual force is little developed, he 
sinks deeper into the herd, under the levelling of 
the class-room. 

"There are no men or women alive, of too deep 
visioning, nor of too lustrous a humanity, for the 
task of showing boys and girls their work. No 
other art answers so beautifully. This is the in- 
tensive cultivation of the human spirit. This is 
world-parenthood, the divine profession. 

"I would have my country call upon every man 
who shows vision and fineness in any work, to 
serve for an hour or two each day, among the 
schools of his neighbourhood, telling the children 
the mysteries of his daily task — and watching for 
his own among them. 

[173] 



CHILD AND COUNTRY 



"All restlessness, all misery, all crime, is the 
result of the betrayal of one's inner life. One's 
work is not being done. You would not see the 
hordes rushing to pluck fruits from a wheel, nor 
this national madness for buying cheap and selling 
dear — if as a race we were lifted into our own 
work. 

"The value of each man is that he has no dupli- 
cate. The development of his particular effective- 
ness on the constructive side is the one important 
thing for him to begin. A man is at his best when 
he is at his work; his soul breathes then, if it 
breathes at all. Of course, the lower the evolution 
of a man, the harder it is to find a task for him to 
distinguish; but here is the opportunity for all of 
us to be more eager and tender. 

"When I wrote to Washington asking how to 
plant asparagus, and found the answer; when I 
asked about field-stones and had the output of the 
Smithsonian Institute turned over to me, my 
throat choked; something sang all around; the 
years I had hated put on strange brightenings. I 
had written Home for guidance. Our national 
Father had answered. Full, eager and honest, the 
answer came — the work of specialists which had 
moved on silently for years. I saw the brother- 
hood of the race in that — for that can only come 
to be in a Fatherland. 

"Give a man his work and you may watch at 
your leisure, the clean-up of his morals and man- 

[174] 



man's own 



ners. Those who are best loved by the angels, 
receive not thrones, but a task. I would rather 
have the curse of Cain, than the temperament to 
choose a work because it is easy. 

"Real work becomes easy only when the man 
has perfected his instrument, the body and brain. 
Because this instrument is temporal, it has a height 
and limitation to reach. There is a year in which 
the sutures close. That man is a master, who 
has fulfilled his possibilities — whether tile- 
trencher, stone-mason, writer, or a carpenter ham- 
mering his periods with nails. Real manhood 
makes lowly gifts significant; the work of such a 
man softens and finishes him, renders him plastic 
to finer forces. 

"No good work is easy. The apprenticeship, 
the refinement of body and brain, is a novitiate 
for the higher life, for the purer receptivity — and 
this is a time of strain and fatigue, with breaks 
here and there in the cohering line. 

". . . The best period of a man's life ; days of 
safety and content; long hours in the pure trance 
of work; ambition has ceased to burn, doubt is 
ended, the finished forces turn outward in service. 
According to the measure of the giving is the re- 
plenishment in vitality. The pure trance of work, 
the different reservoirs of power opening so softly ; 
the instrument in pure listening — long forenoons 
passing, without a single instant of self-conscious- 

[175] 



CHILD AND COUNTRY 



ness, desire, enviousness, without even awareness 
of the body. . . . 

"Every law that makes for man's finer work- 
manship makes for his higher life. The mastery 
of self prepares man to make his answer to the 
world for his being. The man who has mastered 
himself is one with all. Castor and Pollux tell 
him immortal love stories; all is marvellous and 
lovely from the plant to the planet, because man 
is a lover, when he has mastered himself. All the 
folded treasures and open highways of the mind, 
its multitude of experiences and unreckonable pos- 
sessions — are given over to the creative and uni- 
versal force — the same force that is lustrous in 
the lily, incandescent in the suns, memorable in 
human heroism, immortal in man's love for his fel- 
low man. 

"This giving force alone holds the workman 
true through his task. He, first of all, feels the 
uplift; he, first of all, is cleansed by the power of 
the superb life-force passing through him. . . . 
This is rhythm; this is the cohering line; this is 
being the One. But there are no two instruments 
alike, since we have come up by different roads 
from the rock; and though we achieve the very 
sanctity of self-command, our inimitable hall- 
mark is wrought in the fabric of our task." 

Guiding one's own for an hour or two each day 
is not a thing to do for money. The more valuable 

[176] 



man's own 



a man's time (if his payment in the world's stan- 
dards happens to be commensurate with his skill) 
the more valuable he will be to his little group. 
He will find himself a better workman for express- 
ing himself to his own, giving the fruits of his life 
to others. He will touch immortal truths before 
he has gone very far, and Light comes to the life 
that contacts such fine things. He will see the big 
moments of his life in a way that he did not for- 
merly understand. Faltering will more and more 
leave his expression, and the cohering line of his 
life will become more clearly established. 

A man's own are those who are awaiting the 
same call that he has already answered. Browning 
stood amazed before a man who had met Shelley 
and was not different afterward — a man who 
could idly announce that he had met the poet 
Shelley and not accept it as the big event of a 
period. Browning described his dismay at the 
other in the story of finding the eagle feather. He 
did not know the name of the moor ; perhaps men 
had made much of it; perhaps significant matters 
of history had been enacted on that moor, but they 
were nothing to the mystic. One square of earth 
there, the size of a human hand, was sacred to him, 
because it was just on that spot that he found an 
eagle's feather. 

I stood waist-high to Conan Doyle years ago — 
was speechless and outraged that groups of people 
who had listened to him speak, could gather about 

[177] 



CHILD AND COUNTRY 



afterward, talk and laugh familiarly, beg his auto- 
graph. . . . Had he spoken a word or a sentence 
to me, it would not have been writ in water. . . . 
There is no hate nor any love like that which the 
men who are called to the same task have for 
each other. The masters of the crafts know each 
other; the mystics of the arts know each other. 

The preparation for the tasks of the world is 
potential in the breasts of the children behind us. 
For each there is a magic key ; and that man holds 
it who has covered the journey, or part of it, which 
the soul of a child perceives it must set out upon 
soon. The presence of a good workman will 
awaken the potential proclivity of the child's na- 
ture, as no other presence can do. Every autobiog- 
raphy tells the same story — of a certain wonder- 
moment of youth, when the ideal appeared, and all 
energies were turned thereafter to something con- 
crete which that ideal signified. Mostly the "great 
man" did not know what he had done for the boy. 
... I would have the great man know. I would 
have him seek to perform this miracle every day. 

There's always a hush in the room when some 
one comes to me saying, "There is a young man 
who dreams of writing. He is very strange. He 
does not speak about it. He is afraid to show 
what he has done. I wanted to bring him to you- — 
but he would not come. I think he did not dare." 

Formerly I would say, "Bring him over some 
time," but that seldom brought the thing about 

1 178 ] 



man's own 



A man should say, "Lead me to him now!" . . . 
Those who want to write for money and for the 
movies come. They put stamps upon letters they 
write. God knows they are not ashamed to come 
and ask for help, and explain their symptoms of 
yearning and show their structure of desire. . . . 
The one who dares not come ; who dares not mail 
the letter he has written to you, who is speechless 
if you seek him out, full of terror and torture 
before you — take him to your breast for he is your 
own. Children you have fathered may not be so 
truly yours as he. . . . Do you want a slave, a 
worshipper — seek out your own. You want noth- 
ing of the sort, but you alone can free the slave, 
you alone can liberate his worship to the task. 
He can learn from you in a week what it would 
take years of misery in the world to teach him. 
You have done in a way the thing he wants to do 
— that's the whole magic. You have fitted some- 
how to action the dream that already tortures his 
heart. There is nothing so pure as work in the 
world. There is something sacred about a man's 
work that is not elsewhere in matter. Teaching is 
a mutual service. ... It is not that you want 
his reverence, but because he has reverence, he is 
potentially great. 

The ignition of one youth, the finding of his 
work for one youth, is a worthy life task. The 
same possibility of service holds true for all kinds 
of workmen; these things are not alone for the 

[179] 



CHILD AND COUNTRY 



artists and the craftsmen and the professions. 
There is one boy to linger about the forge of an 
artisan, after the others have gone. I would have 
the artisan forget the thing he is doing, to look 
into the eyes of that boy — and the chemist, the 
electrician, the florist. 

It is true that the expression called for here is 
mainly through written words, but that is only 
our particularity. It need not be so. . . . The 
work here would not do for all. ... A young 
woman came and sat with us for several days. 
She was so still that I did not know what was 
happening in her mind. My experience with the 
others had prevailed to make me go slowly, and 
not to judge. We all liked her, all learned to 
be glad that she had come. I asked no expression 
from her for several days. When I finally sug- 
gested something of the kind, I felt the sudden 
terror in the room. Her expression came in a very 
brief form, and it showed me the bewilderment 
with which she had encountered the new points 
of view in the Chapel. I learned afresh that one 
must not hurry; that my first work was to put to 
rest her fears of being called upon. I impressed 
upon the class the next day that we have all the 
time there is; that we want nothing; that our work 
is to establish in due time the natural expressions 
of our faculties. To the young woman in par- 
ticular, I said that when she felt like it she could 
write again. 

[180] 



man's own 



Presently there was a day's absence and another. 
I sent the little girl to see if she were ill. The 
little girl was gone the full afternoon. All I ever 
got from that afternoon was this sentence: 

". . . She is going to be a nurse." 

I have wondered many times if she would have 
become a nurse had I allowed her to sit unex- 
pressed for a month instead of a week; permitting 
her surely to find her ease and understanding of 
us. . . . Still we must have nurses. 

. . . And then the Columbia young man — a big 
fellow and a soul. I had talked to him for many 
nights in an Upper Room class in the city. He 
took a cottage here through part of the first sum- 
mer, before the Chapel began; then, through the 
months of Chapel and story work in the evening, 
I had good opportunity to become acquainted 
with the processes of his mind and heart. Of the 
last, I have nothing but admiration; invincible 
integrity, a natural kindness, a large equipment 
after the manner of the world's bestowal — but 
Inertia. 

Now Inertia is the first enemy of the soul. It 
is caused by pounds. I do not mean that because 
a body is big, or even because a body is fat, that 
it is of necessity an impossible medium for the 
expression of the valuable inner life. There have 
been great fat men whose spiritual energy came 
forth to intensify the vibrations of the race, to say 

[ 181 ] 



CHILD AND COUNTRY 



nothing of their own poundage. It is less a mat- 
ter of weight after all than texture ; still their fat 
was a handicap. 

These facts are indubitable: Sensuousness 
makes weight in bulls and men ; all the habits that 
tend to put on flesh tend to stifle the expression 
of the inner life. All the habits which tend to 
express the human spirit bring about a refinement 
of the body. More spiritual energy is required 
to express itself through one hundred and ninety 
pounds than through one hundred and forty 
pounds. Accordingly as we progress in the expres- 
sion of the spiritual life, the refinement of our 
bodies takes place. As a whole, the great servers 
of men carry little excess tissue; as a whole in 
every fabrication of man and nature — the finer the 
work, the finer the instrument. 

The body is continually levitated through spirit- 
ual expression and continually the more responsive 
to gravitation by sensuous expression. • 

The exquisite blending of maiden pink and sun- 
light gold that is brought forth in the Clovelly 
tea-rose could not be produced upon the petals of 
a dahlia or a morning-glory. That ineffable hue is 
not a matter of pigment alone; it can only be 
painted upon a surface fine enough. The texture 
of the tea-rose petals had to be evolved to receive 
it. . . . You must have gold or platinum points 
for the finest work ; the brighter the light the finer 
the carbon demanded. It is so with our bodies. 

[182] 



man's own 



We live either for appetites or aspirations. The 
flood of outgoing human spirit, in its passionate 
gifts to men, incorporates its living light within 
the cells of our voice-cords and brain and hands. 
With every thought and emotion we give ourselves 
to the earth or give ourselves to the sky. 

The soul is not inert; its instrument, the body, 
is so, by its very nature, formed of matter. The 
earth has required the quickening of countless ages 
to produce the form that we see — the gracious 
beauties of the older trees, the contour of cliffs. 
The very stem and leaf of a Clovelly rose is beau- 
tiful. 

The finest rose of this season, when cut at the 
end of its budding mystery, left nothing but a 
little grey plant that you could cover in your hand. 
You would not think that such a plant could grow 
a bachelor's button; and yet it gave up an individ- 
ual that long will be remembered in human minds. 
I saw that rose in the arch of a child's hand — and 
all about were hushed by the picture. For three 
days it continued to expand, and for three days 
more it held its own great beauty and then show- 
ered itself with a laugh upon a desk of blackened 
oak. We will not forget that inner ardency — the 
virgin unfolding to the sun — born of some great 
passion that seemed poised between earth and 
heaven — and expectant of its own great passion's 
maturity. 

I went back to the little plant, called the chil- 

[ 183 ] 



CHILD AND COUNTRY 



dren to it and all who would come. It was grey 
and neutral like the ground. I think a low song of 
content came from it. The Dakotan said so, and 
he hears these things. I thought of the ecstasy 
of the great givings — the ecstasy of the little old 
grey woman who had mothered a prophet and 
heard his voice afar in the world. 

I showed them the lush and vulgar stems of the 
American beauties, whose marketable excellence is 
measured by size, as the cabbage is, and whose cor- 
responding red is the red of an apoplectic throat. 
I showed them the shoulders and mane of a farm- 
horse and then the shoulders and mane of a thor- 
oughbred. Upon the first the flies fed without 
touching a nerve ; but the satin-skinned thorough- 
bred had to be kept in a darkened stall. The first 
had great foliages of coarse mane and tail; the 
other, a splendid beast that would kill himself for 
you, did not run to hair. 

We stand to-day the product of our past ideals. 
We are making our future in form and texture and 
dynamics by the force of our present hour idealism. 
Finer and finer, more and more immaterial and 
lustrous we become, according to the use and 
growth of our real and inner life. It is the 
quickening spirit which beautifies the form, and 
draws unto itself the excellences of nature. The 
spiritual person is lighter for his size, longer-lived, 
of more redundant health, of a more natural elas- 
ticity, capable of infinitely greater physical, men- 

[184] 



A MANS OWN 



tal, and moral tasks, than the tightly compacted 
earth-bound man. . . . That is not a mere paint- 
er's flourish which adds a halo to the head of a 
saint. It is there if we see clearly. If the sanctity 
is radiant, the glow is intense enough to refract the 
light, to cast a shadow, to be photographed, even 
caught with the physical eye. 



[185] 



i6 
THE PLAN IS ONE 



I WAS relating the experience of the Colum- 
bian. In his case there had been much 
time, so there could be no mistake. He 
had devoted himself to making and keep- 
ing a rather magnificent set of muscles which 
manifested even through white man's clothing. 
He did this with long days of sailing and swim- 
ming, cultivating his body with the assiduity of 
a convalescent. ... I told him in various ways 
he was not getting himself out of his work; 
explained that true preparation is a tearing off 
of husks one after another; that he was a fine 
creation in husk, but that he must get down to 
the quick before he could taste or feel or see 
with that sensitiveness which would make any 
observation of his valuable. With all this body- 
building, he was in reality only covering himself 
the thicker. If a man does this sort of thing for 
a woman's eye, he can only attract a creature of 

[186] 



THE PLAN IS ONE 



blood and iron whose ideal is a policeman — a very 
popular ideal. . . . 

For two or three days he would work terrific- 
ally, then, his weight besetting, he would placate 
himself with long tissue-feeding sports. I told 
him that he had everything to build upon; that 
true strength really begins where physical strength 
ends ; that all that he had in equipment must be set 
in order and integrated with his own intrinsic pow- 
ers, it being valueless otherwise. I pointed out 
that he was but a collector of things he could not 
understand, because he did not use them ; that the 
great doers of the world had toiled for years upon 
years, as he did not toil for one week's days succes- 
sively. ... It would not do, except for short in- 
tervals, and it came to me that my best service was 
to get out from under. I told him so, and the 
manliness of his acceptance choked me. I told 
him to go away, but to come again later if he mas- 
tered Inertia in part. ... It was not all his fault. 
From somewhere, an income reached him regu- 
larly, a most complete and commanding curse for 
any boy. 

... I do not believe in long vacations. Chil- 
dren turned loose to play for ten weeks without 
their tasks, are most miserable creatures at the 
end of the first fortnight. They become more at 
ease as the vacation period advances, but that is 
because the husk is thickening, a most dangerous 
accretion. The restlessness is less apparent be- 

[187] 



CHILD AND COUNTRY 

cause the body becomes heavy with play. It all 
must be worn down again, before the fitness of 
faculty can manifest. 

If one's body is ill from overexertion, it must 
rest; if one's mind is ill from nervousness, stimula- 
tion, or from excessive brain activity, it must rest; 
but if one's soul is ill, and this is the difference, 
nothing but activity will help it, and this activity 
can only be expressed through the body and mind. 
Surplus rest of body or mind is a process of over- 
feeding, which is a coarsening and thickening of 
tissue, which in its turn causes Inertia, and this 
word I continually capitalise, for it is the first 
devil of the soul. 

Before every spiritual illumination, this Inertia, 
in a measure, must be overcome. If you could 
watch the secret life of the great workers of the 
world, especially those who have survived the sen- 
suous periods of their lives, you would find them 
in an almost incessant activity; that their sleep is 
brief and light, though a pure relaxation; that 
they do not eat heartily more than once a day; 
that they reach at times a great calm, another 
dimension of calm entirely from that which has to 
do with animal peace and repletion. It is the 
peace of intensive production — and the spectacle 
of it is best seen when you lift the super from a 
hive of bees, the spirit of which animates every 
moving creature to one constructive end. That 
which emanates from this intensity of action is 

[188] 



THE PLAN IS ONE 



calm, is harmony, and harmony is rest. A man 
does not have to sink into a stupor in order to 
rest. The hours required for rest have more to do 
with the amount of food one takes, and the 
amount of tissue one tears down from bad habits, 
than from the amount of work done. Absolutely 
this is true if a man's work is his own peculiar 
task, for the work a man loves replenishes. 

Desire tears down tissue. There is no pain 
more subtle and terrifying than to want something 
with fury. To the one who is caught in the 
rhythm of his task, who can lose himself in it, even 
the processes which so continually tear down the 
body are suspended. In fact, if we could hold this 
rhythm, we could not die. 

This is what I would tell you: Rhythm of 
work is joy. This is the full exercise — soul and 
brain and body in one. Time does not enter; 
the self does not enter; all forces of beautifying 
play upon the life. There is a song from it — that 
some time all shall hear, the song that mystics 
have heard from the bees, and from open nature 
at sunrise, and from all selfless productivity. 

One cannot play until one has worked — that is 
the whole truth. Ask that restless child to put a 
room in order, to cleanse a hard-wood floor, to 
polish the bath fixtures. Give him the ideal of 
cool, flyless cleanliness in a room. Hold the pic- 
ture of what you want in mind and detail it to 
him, saying that you will come again and inspect 

[189] 



CHILD AND COUNTRY 



his work. Watch, if you care, the mystery of it. 
There will be silence until the thing begins to un- 
fold for him — until the polish comes to wood or 
metal, until the thing begins to answer and the 
picture of completion bursts upon him. Then you 
will hear a whistle or a hum, and nothing will 
break his theme until the end. 

The ideal is everything. You may impress 
upon him that the light falls differently upon 
clean things, that the odour is sweet from clean 
things; that the hand delights to touch them, that 
the heart is rested when one enters a clean room, 
because its order is soothing. ... It isn't the 
room, after all, that gets all the order and cleans- 
ing. The whistle or the hum comes from harmony 
within. 

A man who drank intolerably on occasion told 
me that the way he "climbed out" was to get to 
cleaning something; that his thoughts freshened 
up when he had some new surface to put on an 
object. He meant that the order came to his 
chaos, and the influx of life began to cleanse away 
the litter of burned tissue and the debris of de- 
bauch. One cannot keep on thinking evil thoughts 
while he makes a floor or a gun or a field clean. 
The thing is well known in naval and military 
service where bodies of men are kept in order by 
continual polishing of brasses and decks and ac- 
coutrements. A queer, good answer comes to some 
from softening and cleansing leather. There is a 

[190] 



THE PLAN IS ONE 



little boy here whose occasional restlessness is 
magically done away with, if he is turned loose 
with sponge and harness-dressing upon a saddle 
and bridle. He sometimes rebels at first (before 
the task answers and the picture comes) but pres- 
ently he will appear wide-eyed and at peace, bent 
upon showing his work. 

Play is a drug and a bore, until one has worked. 
I do not believe in athletics for athletics' sake. 
Many young men have been ruined by being in- 
ordinately praised for physical prowess in early 
years. Praise for bodily excellence appeals to 
deep vanities and is a subtle deranger of the larger 
faculties of man. The athlete emerges into the 
world expectant of praise. It is not forthcoming, 
and his real powers have been untrained to earn 
the greater reward. Moreover the one-pointed 
training for some great momentary physical stress, 
in field events, is a body-breaker in itself, a fact 
which has been shown all too often and dramatic- 
ally. Baseball and billiards are great games, but 
as life-quests — except for the few consummately 
adapted players whose little orbit of powers finds 
completion in diamond or green-baized rectangle 
* — the excessive devotion to such play is desolate 
ing, indeed, and that which is given in return is 
fickle and puerile adulation. 

A man's work is the highest play. There is 
nothing that can compare with it, as any of the 
world's workmen will tell you. It is the thing he 

i 1.9.1 ] 



CHILD AND COUNTRY 



loves best to do — constructive play — giving play 
to his powers, bringing him to that raptness which 
is full inner breathing and timeless. . . . We use 
the woods and shore, water and sand and sun and 
garden for recreation. In the few hours of after- 
noon after Chapel until supper, no one here actu- 
ally produces anything but vegetables and tan, yet 
the life- theme goes on. We are lying in the sun, 
and some one speaks; or some one brings down a 
bit of copy. We listen to the Lake ; the sound and 
feel of water is different every day. We find the 
stingless bees on the bluff-path on the way to the 
bathing shore. It is all water and shore, but there 
is one place where the silence is deeper, the sun- 
stretch and sand-bar more perfect. We are very 
particular. One has found that sand takes mag- 
netism from the human body, as fast as sunlight 
can give it, and he suggests that we rest upon the 
grass above — that fallow lands are fruitful and 
full of giving. We test it out like a wine, and 
decide there is something in it. 

There is something in everything. 

The Dakotan said (in his clipped way and so 
low-voiced that you have to bend to hear him) 
that the birds hear something in the morning that 
we don't get. He says there is a big harmony 
over the earth at sunrise, and that the birds catch 
the music of it, and that songs are their efforts to 
imitate it. An afternoon was not badly spent in 
discussing this. We recall the fact that it isn't the 

[ 192 ] 



THE PLAN IS ONE 



human ear-drum exactly which will get this — if it 
ever comes to us — and that Beethoven was stone- 
deaf when he heard his last symphonies, the great 
pastoral and dance and choral pieces, and that he 
wrote them from his inner listening. Parts of 
them seem to us strains from that great harmony 
that the birds are trying to bring out. 

We thought there must be such a harmony in a 
gilding wheat-field. Wheat is good ; even its husk 
is good; beauty and order and service have come 
to it. There is dissonance from chaos; the song 
clears as the order begins. Order should have a 
Capital too. All rising life is a putting of sur- 
faces and deeps in Order. The word Cosmos 
means Order. . . . Wheat has come far, and one 
does well to be alone for a time in a golden after- 
noon in a wheat-field just before cutting. One 
loves the Old Mother better for that adventure. 
She must give high for wheat. She must be virgin 
and strong and come naked and unashamed to the 
sun to bring forth wheat. She must bring down 
the spirit of the sun and blend it with her own — 
for wheat partakes of the alkahest. Wheat is a 
master, an aristocrat. 

The Dakotan said that once when he was on the 
Open Road through the northwest, he slept for 
two days in a car of wheat, and that it was a bath 
of power. . . . We thought we would make our 
beds in wheat, thereafter — but that would be 
sacrilege. 

[193] 



CHILD AND COUNTRY 

Then we talked of that mysterious harmony 
from the beehives, and we saw at once that it has 
to do with Order, that Inertia was mastered there 
— that the spirit of wheat has mastered Inertia — 
so that there is a nobility, even about the golden 
husk. It occurred to us, of course, then, that all 
the aristocrats of Nature — rose and wheat and 
olives and bees and alabaster and grapes — must all 
have their part of the harmony, for Order has 
come to their chaos. Their spirit has come forth, 
as in the face of a far-come child — the brute earth- 
bound lines of self gone — the theme of life, 
Service. 

I am at the end of Capitals now. 

One afternoon we talked about corn — from the 
fields where the passionate mystic Ruth gleaned, 
to our own tasseled garden plot. And another day 
we found the ants enlarging the doors of their tun- 
nels, to let out for the nuptial flight certain winged 
mistresses. There is something in everything. 

Each of us sees it differently. Each of us can 
take what he sees, after all the rest have told their 
stories, and make a poem of that. The first won- 
der of man cannot be conceived until this is real- 
ised. 

There is an inner correspondence in the awak- 
ened human soul for every movement and mystery 
of Nature. When the last resistance of Inertia 
is mastered, we shall see that there is no separate- 

[194] 



THE PLAN IS ONE 



ness anywhere, no detachment; that the infinite 
analogies all tell the same story — that the plan is 
one. 



[195] 



17 
THE IRISH CHAPTER 



THERE was a row of us preparing for 
sleep out under the stars — the Dako- 
tan at one side, then two small boys, 
the little girl and the old man. . . . 
It was one of those nights in which we older 
ones decided to tell stories instead of writing 
them. We had talked long, like true Arabs 
around a fire on the beach. A South Wind came 
in and the Lake received and loved it. I asked the 
Dakotan what the Lake was saying. 
"It isn't — it's listening." 

It made me think at once of the first movement 
of Beethoven's sonata, called Appassionato.. 
There is one here who plays that, and because it 
tells him a story, he plays it sometimes rather well 
and makes the others see. . . . The slow move- 
ment is deeply rich; the inspiration seems to go 
out of the sonata after that, but of the first move- 
ment we never tire, and the drama is always keen. 
It tells the story (to us) of a woman — of love 

[196] 



THE IRISH CHAPTER 

and life and death. She wants the earth in her 
love — but her lover is strange and hears persis- 
tently a call that is not of earth. The woman tries 
to hold him. All earth beauty is about her — her 
love a perfume, a torrent. The voice of destiny 
speaks to her that it must not be. She rebels. 
The story rushes on, many voices coming to her 
re-stating the inexorable truth that he must go. 

The same story is told in Coventry Patmore's 
Departure — to us the most magic of all the great 
little poems. But in Departure it is the woman 
who is called. 

. . . Again and again in the Appassionata, the 
word comes to the woman, saying that she will be 
greater if she speeds him on his way. She will 
not hear. We sense her splendid tenure of beauty 
— all the wonder that Mother Earth has given her. 
. . . One after another the lesser voices have told 
her that it must be, but she does not obey — and 
then the Master comes down. 

It is one of the most glowing passages in all the 
literature of tone. The ckelas have spoken and 
have not availed. Now the Guru speaks. Out of 
vastness and leisure, out of spaciousness of soul 
and wisdom, out of the deeps and heights of com- 
passion, the Guru speaks — and suddenly the wom- 
an's soul turns to him listening. That miracle of 
listening is expressed in the treble — a low light 
rippling receptivity. It is like a cup held forth — • 

[197] 



CHILD AND COUNTRY 



or palms held upward. The Guru speaks. His 
will is done. 

And that is what I thought of, when the Dako- 
tan said that the Lake was listening. It was lis- 
tening to the South Wind. . . . That night we 
talked of Ireland. It may have been the fairies 
that the little girl always brings; or it may have 
been that a regiment of Irish troops had just been 
slaughtered in a cause that had far less significance 
to Ireland than our child talk by the fire ; or it may 
have been the South Wind that brought us closer 
to the fairy Isle, for it is the Irish peasants who 
say to a loved guest at parting: 

"May you meet the South Wind." 

". . . There isn't really an Ireland any more — 
just a few old men and a few old, haunting moth- 
ers. Ireland is here in America, and the last and 
stiffest of her young blood is afield for England. 
Her sons have always taken the field — that is 
their way — and the mothers have brought in more 
sons born of sorrow — magic-eyed sons from the 
wombs of sorrow. Elder brothers afield — fathers 
gone down overseas — only the fairies left by the 
hearth for the younger sons to play with. ... So 
they have sung strange songs and seen strange 
lights and moved in rhythms unknown to many 
men. It is these younger sons who are Ireland 
now. Not a place, but a passion; not a country, 
but a romance. . . . They are in the love stories 
of the world, and they are always looking for 

1 198 ] 



THE IRISH CHAPTER 



their old companions, the fairies. They find the 
fairies in the foreign woodlands; they bring the 
fairies to the new countries. They are in the songs 
that hush the heart ; they are in the mysticism that 
is moving the sodden world. Because they played 
with fairies, they were taught to look past and 
beyond the flesh of faces — past metals and meals 
and miles. Of the reds and greys and moving 
golds which they see, the soul of the world loves 
to listen, for the greatest songs and stories of all 
are from the Unseen " 

It was the old man dreaming aloud. 

"Ireland isn't a place any more. It is a passion 
infused through the world," he added. 

"But the fairies are still there," the little girl 
said. 

"Some are left with the old mothers — yes, some 
are left. But many have taken the field, and not 
for the wars." 

A four-day moon was dropping fast in the low 
west. Jupiter was climbing the east in imperial 
purple — as if to take command. . . . The littlest 
boy stirred in the arms of the Dakotan and began 
to speak, staring at the fire. We all turned and 
bent to listen — and it was that very thing that 
spoiled it — for the sentence faltered and flew 
away. 

We all wanted to know what had been born in 
that long silence, for the firelight was bright in 
two eyes that were very wide and wise — but the 

[199] 



CHILD AND COUNTRY 



brain was only seven. ... I left the circle and 
went up the cliff to find a book in the study — a 
well-used book, an American book. Returning, I 
read this from it, holding the page close to the fire : 

OLD IRELAND 

Far hence, amid an isle of wondrous beauty, 
Crouching over a grave, an ancient, sorrowful 

mother, 
Once a queen — now lean and tatter'd, seated on 

the ground, 
Her old white hair drooping dishevel'd round her 

shoulders ; 
Long silent — she too long silent — mourning her 

shrouded hope and heir; 
Of all the earth her heart most full of sorrow, 

because most full of love. 

Yet a word, ancient mother; 

You need crouch there no longer on the cold 

ground, with forehead between your knees ; 
O you need not sit there, veil'd in your old white 

hair, so dishevel'd; 
For know you, the one you mourn is not in that 

grave ; 
It was an illusion — the heir, the son you love, was 

not really dead; 
The Lord is not dead — he is risen, young and 

strong, in another country; 
Even while you wept there by your fallen harp, 

by the grave, 
What you wept for, was translated, pass r d from 

the grave, 

[200] 



THE IRISH CHAPTER 



The winds favoured and the sea sail'd it, 
And now with rosy and new blood, 
Moves to-day in a new country. 

One by one they dropped off asleep, the little 
ones first, as the moon went down — their thoughts 
so full of stars, asking so dauntlessly all questions 
of world and sky. What I could, I answered, but 
I felt as young as any. It seemed their dreams 
were fresher than mine, and their closeness to God. 
. . . The little girl touched me, as we drifted 
away 

"May you meet the South Wind!" she whis- 
pered. 



[201 ] 



i8 
THE BLEAKEST HOUR 



IT is a thankless job to raise a voice in the 
din of things as they are, a voice saying 
things are wrong. One may do this for 
years without penetrating the din, so long as 
he does not become specific. Or one may become 
a specialist in a certain wrong, gain recognition as 
a gentle fanatic on a certain subject, do much 
good with his passion, find certain friends and 
sterling enemies — and either lose or win, ulti- 
mately, according to change in the styles of his 
time. 

Or, with one-pointed desire to change the spirit 
of things, one may reach the gloomy eminence 
from which it is perceived that all things are 
wrong, because the present underlying motive of 
the whole is wrong. He sees one body of men 
scrubbing one spot on the carpet, another sewing 
earnestly at a certain frayed selvage, another try- 
ing to bring out the dead colour from a patch that 
wear and weather have irrevocably changed. He 

[202] 



THE BLEAKEST HOUR 



blesses them all, but his soul cries out for a new- 
carpet — at least, a wholesome and vigorous tub- 
bing of the entire carpet, and a turning over of 
the whole afterward. 

Unless our life here is a sort of spontaneous 
ebullition out of the bosom of nature, without 
significance to us before and after, we are moving 
about our business of house and country and 
world in a most stupid, cruel and short-sighted 
fashion. I realise, and this is the wine of life, that 
the hearts of men are tender and lovable, naturally 
open and subject by nature to beauty and faith; 
that the hearts of men, indeed, yearn for that pur- 
ity of condition in which truth may be the only 
utterance, and the atmosphere of untruth as revolt- 
ing as bad air to the nostrils. 

But with this realisation appears the facts that 
the activities in the world of men have little to do 
with this purity and heart-giving — but with an 
evil covering, the integument of which is the lie 
born of self -desire, and the true skin of which is 
the predatory instinct which has not remotely to 
do with an erect spine. 

Higher days are coming for the expression of 
the human spirit. There is no doubt about that. 
But still the men who do the most to hurry them 
along, find a fight on each ledge of the cliff. Phil- 
osophically, it may be said that wars have brought 
great benefits to the race; that materialism has 
taught us our place here below as no other passion 

[203] 



CHILD AND COUNTRY 



could; that trade has wrought its incomparable 
good to the races of men; that Fear has been the 
veritable mother of our evolution, its dark shadow- 
forever inciting us, breaking our Inertia, bringing 
swiftness and strength first to the body, then to 
brain. Even desire for self, on the long road be- 
hind, has been the good angel of our passage, for 
we had to become splendid beasts before the 
dimension of man could be builded. . . . All 
good ; mistakes nowhere in the plan. 

But the trouble is, the passage of the many from 
grade to grade is intolerably slow. We had 
thought the many had finished with war. The 
few already are many grades ahead of that; the 
few have seen the virtues die out of patriotism and 
trade; they have watched the desire for self turn 
reptile, and hearkened to this truth which is begin- 
ning to reverberate around the world: What is 
good for beasts is not of necessity good for men. 
. . . One recent caller here, male, middle-aged, 
smilingly discussed all things from the philo- 
sophical point of view. I was saying: 

"From the nursery to world-clutched retire- 
ment from public affairs, a man nowadays is 
taught more and more to keep his heart-principle 
locked " 

He smiled : "We have all the time there is. It 
will all come out right. You fellows excite your- 
selves and try to change things overnight. Others 
of us think them over quietly by our fires. That 

[204] 



THE BLEAKEST HOUR 



is the whole difference. Scratch off the veneer, 
and we are all the same kind of God-yearning 
animal underneath." 

Few sayings ever have hit me harder. 

I studied the years' offerings from this man — to 
his house, to his acquaintances, to the world in 
general. An irony filled the room, and so intense 
was it that it seemed to have a colour, a kind of 
green and yellow vapour. It emanated from the 
centre of his face. I think the point that animated 
me especially was that he was in the habit of talk- 
ing to young men. He had no children of his own. 
I changed the subject and opened the door — not to 
hasten his departure but because the air was close. 

By every law which makes us hold fast to the 
memory of saviours and great men, the finest 
fabric of any race is its pioneers. We are living 
and putting into action now the dreams of brave 
spirits who have gone before. Philosophically, 
even they may have found that the plan is good, 
but that did not prevent them from giving their 
lives to lift the soddenness and accelerate the 
Inertia of the crowds. They took their joy in the 
great goodness of the plan — only after they had 
done their best to bring the race more swiftly into 
its higher destiny. A man does not sit back and 
allow his children to spend years in learning that 
which he can explain in a moment from his own 
experience. ... I did not answer the philosopher, 

but many things that occurred from that little talk 

[205] 



CHILD AND COUNTRY 



were brought out in Chapel during the days which 
followed — matters that had to do with America 
and literary workmanship in particular. Certain 
of the matters we discussed have been written 
down for expression here: 

If some one announced that there lived in the 
Quattuor Islands a man who knew the exact way 
to bring into the world, not only the spirit, but 
the action of brotherhood and fatherland^ there 
would be some call for maps and steamship pas- 
sages. If the Quattuor Islands were not already 
on the maps, they would presently appear, but not 
before the first pilgrims had set out. And if some 
one should add that all expression of the arts so 
far in the world is addled and unsightly compared 
to that which is about to be, if a certain formula 
is followed, and that this man in the Quattuor 
group has the formula — many more would start 
on the quest, or send their most trusted secretaries. 

And yet the truth and the way is all here, and 
has been uttered again and again by every voice 
that has lifted itself above the common din. 

The wise men carried gifts. You would expect 
to give something for the secret. You might ex- 
pect to be called upon to sell all you have and 
give to the poor. You would not be surprised 
even if the magnetic Islander said: 

"It is not your frankincense and myrrh that I 
want, though I thank you. That which I have is 

[206] 



THE BLEAKEST HOUR 



for you. I am more anxious for you to know and 
live it, than you can be to have and hold it. But 
the mystery is that it will not come to abide with 
you, while you are passionate for possession. The 
passion to give to others must be established within 
you before you can adequately receive " 

You are beginning to see how ancient is the 
gospel. It is old, older than that. It belongs to 
the foundations. Personally and nationally, the 
law works the same way. That which is true, is 
true in all its parts. There is an adjustment by 
which that which is good for the whole is good for 
the part; but each, whole and part, nation and 
man, must have for the first thought, not self- 
good, but the general good. One nation, so estab- 
lished in this conviction that its actions are auto- 
matically founded upon the welfare of the world, 
could bring about the true world-fatherland in a 
generation; and one human heart so established 
begins to touch from the first moment the pro- 
found significances of life. 

Personally and nationally, this plain but tre- 
mendous concept is beginning to manifest itself 
here in America. I do not write as a patriot. It 
is not my country that is of interest, but human- 
kind. America's political interests, her trade, all 
her localisations as a separate and bounded peo- 
ple, are inimical to the new enthusiasm. The new 
social order cannot concern itself as a country 
apart. American predatory instincts, her self- 

[207] 



CHILD AND COUNTRY 

worship, her attempt at neutrality while supplying 
explosives for the European slaughter arenas, her 
deepening confinement in matter during the past 
fifty years, have prepared her for the outright 
demoralisation of war, just as surely as Europe is 
meeting to-day the red harvest from such instincts 
and activities. For action invariably follows the 
thought. 

Yet the hearts of men in America are changing. 
I do not write as a religionist, but as one very 
much of the world. For the hearts of men do 
change, and it is only through such changes that 
the material stagnation of a people can be relieved 
without deluges of blood. 

The high hope is upon us. In being apart from 
war, America has been enabled to see. One must 
always remove himself from the ruck to see its 
movement. Within these western shores, the 
voices of true inspiration have recently been heard. 
From a literary standpoint alone, this is the most 
significant fact since Emerson, Whitman and 
Thoreau and Lanier took pen in hand, forgetting 
themselves a little while each day. There is a 
peculiar strength upon American production of all 
kinds as a result of the very act of getting out from 
under European influence. 

England and France and Germany have fallen 
into mere national voices. The voice of the par- 
tisan is but a weak treble, against the basic rumble 
of war. War in this century is a confession, as 

[208] 



THE BLEAKEST HOUR 



suicide is a confession, as every act of blood and 
rage is a confession, of the triumph of the animal 
in the human mind. ... If you received letters 
from friends in England or Germany or France 
during the war — friends whom formerly you ad- 
mired for their culture and acumen — you were 
struck by the dulness and misery of the com- 
munications, the uncentred points of view, the 
incapacity of human vision in the midst of the 
heaviness and blackness of life there; if, indeed, 
you read the newspapers and periodicals of those 
countries, you required no further proof of the fact 
— that a nation at war is an obscene nation, its 
consciousness all driven down into the physical, its 
voice tonally imperfect from hate and fear, its eyes 
open to red illusion and not to truth. 

Even in America the voice of the nationalist is 
a part of the old and the unclean. The new social 
order does not recognise the rights and desires of 
any isolated people. Humankind is basically one 
in meaning, in aim and in destiny. The differences 
of nations in relation to the sun's rays and in char- 
acter of country, environment, race, colour and 
structure of mind — these are primal values, the 
very values that will sum up into the essential 
grandeur of the whole. Personally and nationally 
there are no duplicates in the social scheme. The 
instruments of this magnificent orchestra are of 
infinite diversity, but the harmony is one. 

The spiritual source of all human achievement 

[209] 



CHILD AND COUNTRY 



is already a harmonic whole. That globe is com- 
plete. It is our business as men to make a pattern 
of it in matter — to make the dream come true in 
flesh, each man and each nation bringing his 
labour. 

If a certain plant, bird, insect, beast, man or 
nation, rises by intrinsic force and predation to 
dangerous increase, a devouring parasite, or for- 
midable rival, is invariably fostered within its 
shadow. In good time there is war to the death. 

In a doctor's office in Canada, I saw the picture 
of a bull-dog standing large against the back- 
ground of the accepted flag, and beneath was this 
line: 

"What we have, we'll hold." 

I found that the picture had a national popular- 
ity. Yet a child stopping to think would have 
seen breakers ahead for a nation so lost in material 
things, as thus to challenge the Fates. . . . There 
is a fairy-tale of a man building a great boat for 
the air. It looked to win, and in the effrontery 
of achievement, he set forth to conquer God. 
Just then a hornet stung him. 

It is a conviction held here that the darkest 
period of American materialism came to its end 
with the beginning of the war. The generation 
of literary producers in manifestation at that time 
was responsible for the bleakest products which 

[210] 



THE BLEAKEST HOUR 



America will ever have the shame of showing to 
future generations. 

It was not so devoid of genius as would appear ; 
the first cause was the difficulty in getting the best 
work "through." This again w T as not because the 
public was not ready for the good, but because the 
public taste was brutalised by men who stood 
between the public and the producers. These mid- 
dlemen insisted, by the right of more direct con- 
tact, that the public should have what they fancied 
the public desire to be. 

I sat in Union Square recently with a beggar 
who studied me, because it appeared to be my 
whim to help him with a coin. Back of his tem- 
ples was a great story — sumptuous drama and 
throbbing with the first importance of life. He 
did not tell me that story, and I could not draw 
it from him. Rather he told me the story that he 
fancied I would want. There was a whine in it. 
He chose to act, and he was not a good actor. 
His offering hurt, not because he was filthy and a 
failure, but because he lied to himself and to me, 
because he did not dare to be himself, though the 
facts were upon him, eye and brow and mouth. 
So I did not get his story, but I got a thrilling 
picture of the recent generation in American letters 
— I, being the public; the truth of his story repre- 
senting the producer, and the miserable thing he 
fancied I was ready for, being the middleman's 
part. 

[211] 



CHILD AND COUNTRY 



All workmen of the last generation — all who 
would listen — were taught to bring forth their 
products with an intervening lie between the truth 
and their expression — the age of advertising heavy 
in all production. 

I recall from those days what was to me a sig- 
nificant talk with an American novelist who 
wanted sales, who was willing to sacrifice all 
but the core of his character to get sales, and who 
found himself at that time in a challenging situa- 
tion. As he expressed it: 

'Along about page two hundred in the copy of 
the novel I am on, the woman's soul wakes up." 

"A woman's novel?" I asked. 

"Meant to be," said he. "Study of a woman all 
through. Begins as a little girl — different, you 
know — sensitive, does a whole lot of thinking that 
her family doesn't follow. Tries to tell 'em at 
first, but finds herself in bad. Then keeps quiet 
for years — putting on power and beauty in the 
good old way of bumps and misunderstanding. 
She's pure white fire presently — body and brain 
and something else asleep. She wants to be a 
mother, but the ghastly sordidness of the love 
stories of her sisters to this enactment, frightens 
her from men and marriage as the world conducts 
it " 

"I follow you," said I. 

"Well, I'm not going to do the novel here for 
you," he added. "You wouldn't think there was 

[212] 



THE BLEAKEST HOUR 



a ray of light in it from this kind of telling. A 
man who spends five months of his best hours of 
life in telling a story, can't do it over in ten min- 
utes and drive a machine at the same time " 

"We're getting out of the crowd. What did 
the girl do?" I asked. 

"Well, she wanted a little baby — was ready to 
die for it, but had her own ideas of what the Father 
should be. A million women — mostly having 
been married and failed, have thought the same 
thing here in America — pricked the unclean sham 
of the whole business. Moreover, they're the best 
women we've got. There are — — " 

He purposely shook the hat from his head — 
back into the seat — at this point. 

"There are some young women coming up into 
maturity here in America — God bless 'em — who 
are almost brave enough to set out on the quest 
for the Father of the baby that haunts them to be 
born. . . . That's what she did. He was a young 
man doing his own kind of work — doctoring 
among the poor, let us say, mainly for nothing — 
killing himself among men and women and babies ; 
living on next to nothing, but having a half-divine 
kind of madness to lift the world. . . . She saw 
him. You can picture that. They were two to 
make one — and a third. She knew. There was 
a gold light about his head which she saw — and 
some of the poverty-folk saw — but which he didn't 

[213] 



CHILD AND COUNTRY 



know the meaning of, and the world missed alto- 
gether. 

"She went to him. It's cruel to put it in this 
way. . . . I'm not saying anything about the 
writing or about what happened, but the scene as 
it came to me was the finest thing I ever tried to 
put down. We always fall down in the handling, 
you know. ... I did it the best I could. . . . 
No, I'm not going to tell you what happened. 
Only this: a little afterward — along about page 
two hundred of the copy — the woman's soul 
woke up." 

"Why not, in God's name?" I asked. 

He glanced quickly at me as a man does from 
ahead when his car is pressing the limit. 

"Ever have a book fail?" he asked. 

"Seven," said I. 

He cleared his throat and the kindest smile came 
into his eyes: 

"They tell me at my publishers' that I slowed 
up my last book badly — by taking a woman's soul 
out for an airing — just a little invalid kind of a 
soul, too. Souls don't wake up in American novels 
any more. You can't do much more in print now- 
adays than you can do on canvas — I mean movie 
canvas. You can paint soul but you can't photo- 
graph it — that's the point. The movies have put 
imagination to death. We have to compete. You 
can't see a soul without imagination — or some sort 
of madness — and the good people who want imag- 

[214] 



THE BLEAKEST HOUR 



ination in their novels don't buy 'em. They rent 
or borrow. It's the crowds that go to the movies 
that have bright-coloured strings of American nov- 
els as the product runs — on their shelves — little 
shiny varnished shelves — red carpets — painted 
birds on the lamp-shades and callers in the even- 
ings." 

There was a good silence. 

"Do you know," he added presently, "I've about 
come to the conclusion that a novel must play 
altogether on sensuous tissue to catch the crowd. 
Look at the big movie pictures — the actors make 
love like painted animals. . . . I'm not humorous 
or ironical. It's a big problem to me " 

"Why, you can't touch the hem of the garment 
of a real love story until you are off the sensuous," 
I offered. "The quest only begins there. I'm not 
averse to that. It belongs in part. We are sensu- 
ous beings — in part. But I am averse to letting 
it contain all. Why, the real glow comes to a 
romance when a woman's soul wakes up. There's 
a hotter fire than that which burns blood-red " 

"I know," he said quickly. "I know. That 
blood-red stuff is the cheapest thing in the world. 
. . . I'm sure of this story until her soul wakes 
up. She stirs in her sleep, and I see a giantess 
ahead — the kind of a woman who could whistle to 
me or to you — and we'd follow her out — dazed 
by the draw of her. They are in the world. I 
reckon souls do wake up — but I can feel the public 

[215] 



CHILD AND COUNTRY 



dropping off every page after two hundred — like 
chilled bees — dropping off page by page — and the 
old familiar battle ahead for me. I can feel that 
tight look of poverty about the eyes again " 

"Are you going to put her soul back to sleep?" 
I asked, as we turned again into the crowd. 

I wasn't the least lordly in this question. I 
knew his struggle, and something of the market, 
too. I was thinking of tradesmen — how easy it 
is to be a tradesman; in fact, how difficult it is 
to be otherwise — when the very passion of the 
racial soul moves in the midst of trade. 

"She's beautiful — even asleep," he said. "I'm 
afraid I'll have to give her something. I'm build- 
ing a house. She's in the comprehension of the 
little varnished shelves — asleep." 

"Doesn't a tight look come about the eyes — 
from much use of that sort of ansesthetic?" I 
asked. 

"Let's get a drink," he answered. 



1216] 



19 
THE NEW SOCIAL ORDER 



BUT the stroke of death has fallen upon 
such pandering, and the war put it there. 
The big names of the last generation are 
now magazine and movie men; all save 
the few whose sutures have not entirely closed, 
and they are making their last frenzied turn to 
meet the new social order, as they met the float- 
ing vogues and whims so long. But this is a 
difficult turn for panderers and caterers, because 
it does not have to do with the surface matter, 
nothing to do with dance and dress and appetite, 
but with the depths of the human spirit, quickened 
to animation afresh by the agony of the world. 

Only the rarest few of the greatest names of 
England and Europe have escaped the fatal par- 
tisanship. They have become little national 
voices, and in the coming years this will be remem- 
bered against them bitterly. The truly liberated 
soul does not fall into lying attempts at national 
exoneration. The truly liberated soul is no longer 
a nationalist. A few of the young men have es- 

[217] 



CHILD AND COUNTRY 

caped this curse, but the older had their training, 
as has been told, in the blackest age of man. Men 
have been diminished in more spacious times than 
these by becoming laureates; they cannot but be 
degraded by becoming nationalists in these aban- 
doned hours. 

Genius, in the last generation, met a destructive 
force in the material world, almost as deadly and 
vindictive as that encountered by Copernicus. The 
voices of very few heralds were even heard, but 
there is a battle-line of genius in the new genera- 
tion, timed for the great service years following 
the chaos of war. They will bring in the libera- 
tion of religion from mammon; they will bring 
in the religion of work, the equality of women, 
not on a mere suffrage matter alone, but in spirit 
and truth; they will bring in their children un- 
accused. 

. . . There's always a squeaking when a wagon 
climbs out of a rut, which is another way of saying 
that a time of transition is a time of pain. 

This is a notable and constructive generation 
now beginning its work in America, and joining 
hands with the few remaining Undefiled of Eu- 
rope. They are not advertisers, nor self-servers. 
They do not believe in intellect alone. Their 
genius is intuitionally driven, not intellectually. 
Just as steam has reached its final limitations as 
a force, and is being superseded by electricity (the 

[218] 



THE NEW SOCIAL ORDER 

limitations of which have not yet been sensed so 
far even by the most audacious), so the intellect, as 
a producing medium, has had its period — a period 
of style-worship, vanities of speech and action, 
of self-service, of parading, of surface-show and 
short-sightedness, without parallel in the world. 

For the intellect is a product of sunlight, its 
energy supplied by human blood, a temporal heat. 
Intuition is driven from the fountain-head of spir- 
itual energy. Its great conception is the unity 
of all nature. The intellect is as old as your 
body is; the giant that is awakening from sleep 
in the breasts of the rising generation is immortal. 

In all times, second-class artists have dealt in 
the form and matter of the age, talked of its ef- 
fects and paraded its styles. Only the very great- 
est above them have realised that the true story of 
the thing, as any given man sees it, is the one im- 
portant thing in the world for him to produce; 
that the nearness of the expression to the thought 
is the measure of his success; in a word, that his 
thought must be put into words (or tones or paint or 
stone) without an intervening lie from the medium. 

The race of men and women in their twenties, 
now at work in America, are doing these things. 
Especially in the new poetry is the fine consum- 
mation apparent. These are the leaders of the 
new social order. Before the war, such as had de- 
veloped a voice had to shout through shut doors. 
The war has beaten down the doors. A compar- 

[219] 



CHILD AND COUNTRY 



able race of young workmen (more men than 
women there; more women than men here) has 
appeared in Russia and raised its voice. It is not 
altogether a dream that a unifying span will 
stretch across the pillars raised by these two groups 
of builders. 

In America this rising generation shall return to 
us the prestige which Whitman, Emerson, Thoreau 
and Lanier so superbly attracted. Indeed, Whit- 
man is the master of the new poetry ; his free verse 
lives in every line of the modern production, a 
point that would not be significant if it were alone 
of manner; but his broad human spirit, the infus- 
ing brotherhood which was his passion, and the 
same universal toleration, are the inspiring ener- 
gies of the new workmanship. 

What is the vision of this new social order? 

These workmen recognise that no saint's blood, 
nor the power of any God, is going to interfere 
before a heavenly throne to save sinners who have 
wasted their lives in predatory accomplishment, 
instead of saving themselves; 

That the re-distribution of the world's wealth 
will not bring about the new order and beauty of 
life; that the rich man is to be pitied as much as 
the poor (God knows that intrinsically he is to 
be pitied more, because his shell is thicker) that 
the time is at hand when the vulgarity of being 
rich in material wealth will be a sense of the com- 
mon mind; 

[220] 



THE NEW SOCIAL ORDER 

That women are not golden fleeces, nor clinging 
vines, but human adults with separate principles 
from men, which make them equally valuable in 
the social scheme ; that women should be their own 
law in all matters of mating and reproduction, 
because the male has not the mental organism to 
cope authoritatively with these affairs; 

That heretofore as educators, as fathers, moth- 
ers and bringers-forth of children, humankind, in 
the large, has shown itself less than the animals, 
inasmuch as it does not fulfil its possibilities as 
animals do; 

That the time is past for cults and creeds, for 
separate interests and national boundaries, for 
patriotism and all the other isms; that we are all 
one in the basic meaning of existence; that there 
is an adjustment founded upon the principles of 
liberty and brotherhood, in which that which is 
good for the one is good for all; that this ad- 
justment can only be attained by a reversal of 
the old form, personally and nationally — of 
thinking not of the self first in all things, but of 
the general good; 

Finally, the new social order of workmen, hav- 
ing come up through the blear and sickness of 
lies, has arrived at the high vantage which re- 
veals that there is nothing so potent as a straight 
statement of fact, nothing so strategically the 
masterstroke. 

[ 221 ] 



20 

COMMON CLAY BRICK 



CERTAIN Chapel days we require music 
instead of talk; other times only a walk 
will do, to the woods or shore accord- 
ing to the mood. One afternoon we 
walked up the shore where the beach is narrow 
and the bluffs high. A gleam of red in the sand 
became the theme of the day. It was just a half- 
brick partly submerged in sand, and momentarily 
in the wash of the waves. ... It had a fine gleam 
— a vivid wet red against the gravel greys. Its 
edges were rounded by the grind of sand and wa- 
ter, and one thought of an ancient tile that might 
be seen in a Chinese rose garden. 

. . . Just a common clay brick, not very old, 
not very hard, but a thing of beauty in the greys 
of the beach. It suggested a girl's dress I had once 
seen on a winter's day — a rough cloth of mixed 
grey wool with a narrow edging of red velvet 
around the sleeves and collar. . . . Yet, alone, 
and now that it was dry — this was just a brick- 

[222 ] 



COMMON CLAY BRICK 

red. It needed the grey grain. ... I reflected 
that there must be a deep human reason for its ap- 
peal to our sense of beauty. 

There was something in the hollowing and 
rounded edges, such as no machine or hand- 
grinding could duplicate, but that had to do with 
the age of the impression it gave. There is beauty 
in age, a fine mystery in itself. Often the objects 
which our immediate forebears found decorative 
strike our finer eyes as hideous, and with truth; 
but the more ancient things which simpler races 
found useful and lovely, often appeal to us as con- 
summate in charm and grace, though we may 
never have seen them before in this life. The 
essence of their beauty now is a certain thrilling 
familiarity — the same mystery that awakens us 
in an occasional passing face, which we are posi- 
tive has not met these eyes before. 

We are all more or less sensitive to mystic rela- 
tionships with old vases and coppers, with gourds 
and bamboo, urns and sandal-wood, with the 
scents and flavours of far countries and sudden 
stretches of coast, so that we repeat in wonder — 

"And this is the first time " Something deep 

within knows better, perhaps. It is enough, how- 
ever, to grant the profound meanings underlying 
our satisfaction in ancient objects, and that our 
sense of their beauty is not accidental. 

For instance, there was something behind our 
pleasure in the gleam of red from the pervading 

[223 ] 



CHILD AND COUNTRY 



greys of the beach. ... I pointed to the Other 
Shore — a pearly cloud overhanging the white of 
breakers at its point — and the little bay asleep in 
the hollow. The view was a fulfilment. That 
little headland breaks the force of the eastern gales 
for all this nearer stretch of shore, but its beauty 
is completed by the peace of the cove. The same 
idea is in the stone-work of the Chapel, and the 
completing vine. 

Beauty is a globe of meaning. It is a union of 
two objects which complete each other and sug- 
gest a third — the union of two to make one. Our 
minds are satisfied with the sustaining, the mascu- 
line in the stone-work and the gaunt headland, 
because they are completed by the trailing vine 
and the sleeping cove. The suggestion in each is 
peace, the very quest of life. 

There is always this trinity, to form a globe 
of beauty. From the union of matter and spirit, 
all life is quickened; and this initial formula of 
completing a circle, a trinity, pervades all life. 

We are thrilled by the symbols of the great 
original affinity of matter and spirit, and the very 
life which we thrill with is its completing third. 

Artists know this deeper than brain. We re- 
garded the elm tree with its haggard weather- 
blackened limbs, and springing from it, the deli- 
cate green foliage. It was like the background 
of a great painting. I brought forth later some 
small reproductions of a number of famous paint- 

[224] 



COMMON CLAY BRICK 



ings. Among them, we found the stone and the 
vine often in the background, or the branch and 
the leaf, pictured usually with a suggestion of run- 
ning water at the base, for action and progress 
and the ever-onward human spirit. We didn't 
find full-leafed trees there (for that would hide 
the lineaments of beauty, as the character of a 
face is concealed in fatness) — but branch and leaf, 
the need each of the other, and the promise of the 
fruit. It was the globe again — the union of the 
strong and the fragile for a finer dimension of 
power — bow and cord, ship and sail, man and 
woman, stalk and leaf, stone and vine — yes, and 
that which surprised me at the beginning — that 
gleam of red in the wash of water upon the greys. 
It was the suggestion of warmth and life brought 
to the cold, inanimate hues of sand and gravel, 
that gave us the sense of beauty in a wet, worn 
brick. 

Firelight in a room is just the same thing — a 
grey stone fireplace with red embers is the very 
heart of a winter house. ... If there had not 
been a vital significance back of our discovery 
of the day, our sense of a brick's beauty would 
have been untimely and disordered. . . . 

Such were the points brought out as we walked. 
The episode is indicative of the days here. The 
best hours are always spontaneous. I am always 
occupied with my own affairs until the moment 
of Chapel, but Nature is invariably safe and re- 

[ 225 ] 



CHILD AND COUNTRY 



plete. There are a thousand analogies for every 
event of the human spirit, even for the resurrec- 
tion of the human soul. The plan is one. 

The day would have been poorly spent, no 
matter what I might say, without an expression 
from the others on the beauty conception. It is 
the union again of receiving and expressing that 
makes growth and character. They would not 
try to remember what I said. Memory is not 
the faculty I cared to cultivate. The endeavour 
here is from the spirit outward. I do not wish to 
fill their brains, but to inspire their souls to fill 
their own brains. All work is a training for the 
expression of the real self. We are infinitely 
greater than our brains. If I can arrive at the 
truth of any subject, I need have no worry about 
sleepy heads or Inertia. A disclosure of truth, 
and the process of it made clear, is the perfect 
awakener, for truth is the aliment of the soul. It 
is not what I say, but what a truth suggests to 
them, that determines the value of their expres- 
sion of it. 

Expression is the triumph. Every time the 
brain gives expression to the real self, there is a 
memorable vitality, not only in the expression, 
but strength and authority added to the brain it- 
self. This is training for writers, but words are 
the natural implements for us all. ... So the 
ardent aim of the classes here is to awaken the 
deeper vitalities of those who listen. When one 

[226] 



COMMON CLAY BRICK 

awakens a soul interest, you may rely upon it the 
brain is open to its full zest and capacity. Pat- 
tering of uncohered facts upon the temporal sur- 
face of the brain in the effort to lodge them in the 
tentacles of memory, does not construct the char- 
acter of man or woman. 

The superb flower of any educational work is 
the occasional disclosure of the real bent of a 
student. That is always like the discovery of 
eldorado. The most important fact to be con- 
sidered in any educational ideal is that the soul 
of every one has its own especial treasures and 
bestowals; and when one succeeds in touching 
with fresh fire an ancient facility or proclivity in 
the breast of a boy or girl — the rest is but fol- 
lowing the gleam. . . . The world finds us sig- 
nificant, even heroic, only in so far as we give 
expression to a power intrinsic. 

Another day we found more water-worn bricks. 
An old brick house long ago had rubbed itself 
into the falling bank, and now its parts are spread 
along certain portions of the shore and buried in 
the sand. The boys brought in a half-bushel of 
this red treasure, and we set about constructing a 
narrow cement walk of quality. Our idea was to 
carry out and make perpetual the affinity of the 
red gleams as insets in a grey pebble walk. 

We worked raptly, even through the hard, dull 
labour of levelling, setting the frames and laying 

[227] 



CHILD AND COUNTRY 



the concrete foundation. The finishing was the ab- 
sorbing part. The idea was not for a fine-grained 
sand walk, but a mixture of all sizes from a penny- 
large down to the finest sand. The cement makes 
the most lasting bond in a mixture of this kind; 
moreover, the pebbly finish was effective and 
darker for the insets. 

The walk was less than two feet wide and 
roughly squared by pieces of shingle laid in the 
concrete, tip to tip. The final dressing, two inches 
of pebble mortar, looked unpromising on account 
of its coating of white. It would have hardened 
a dingy cement colour, instead of the deep, 
sparkling grey desired, had we not thought of 
turning a fine spray from the hose upon the newly 
trowelled surface to wash away the top cement. 
To make sure, the surface was then lightly 
sponged until the pebble-tops were absolutely 
without the clinging white. The water also erased 
the least mark of the trowel. 

The red insets were now tamped in with the 
trowel-handle, the unique round edges appearing 
without a touch of stain. The rapidly hardening 
mortar was not packed about the brick pieces, but 
the natural edge of the grey preserved, as if they 
had been hurled in. They were placed without 
immediate regularity, but with relation to the 
walk in its length. . . . We regarded it after- 
ward in the rain — all frames and shingles re- 
moved, the loam and humus of the rose-soil soft- 

[228] 



COMMON CLAY BRICK 



ening the border — the red rounded edges of the 
brick-insets gleaming out of the grey — a walk that 
seemed to have been there a thousand years, the 
red pieces seemingly worn by the bare feet of cen- 
turies. ... It satisfied, and the thought, too, that 
those who helped to do the work could not be 
quite the same after that afternoon. 



[229] 



21 

THE HIGHEST OF THE ARTS 



ONE day at Chapel, neither the Abbot 
nor the Dakotan appeared. The 
Columbian had left us. I looked up 
to see two young girls and another 
there. One of the papers brought in that day was 
upon the joining of two rivers. Where they came 
together was a whirlpool, a tremendous vortex 
that hushed all surrounding Nature. In the low- 
lands that lay about the place of that mighty 
meeting, a deep verdure came, for the winds car- 
ried the spray from the vortex. Nature loved the 
sounds of that pouring together. From the whirl- 
pool, where two met, one great river emerged, 
white-maned with rapids for a way — then broad 
and pure and still, so that only birds and poets 
could hear the harmony deep as life. From time 
to time it gave forth its tributaries, yet seemingly 
was undiminished. Always on, always one, car- 
rying all, making all pure, through the silent 
places, past the great mountains — to the sea. 

[230] 



THE HIGHEST OF THE ARTS 

It was not until I had read of this mating of 
waters that I realised the slightly different con- 
ditions in the Chapel, the young men not being 
there. 

. . . The strangest humility stole over me. It 
had become the life-theme — to bring a breath 
from the open splendour of the future to the mat- 
ings of men and women. I have never been able 
to understand how anything can be expected of 
men, if women are not great. I have never been 
able to understand how men and women can take 
each other as a matter of course. Most of all, I 
have been unable to understand how women can 
accept the man-idea of things. 

The great killing in Europe was brought about 
because women have accepted the man-idea of life. 
Women are in this sense immediately responsible 
for the war, because they have not been true to 
the limitless potentialities of their being. Still 
from the very hour when man realised his greater 
bodily strength, continual pressures have fallen 
upon woman to break her dream. The Hebrew 
Scriptures show best the processes that have been 
brought to bear upon women — from the estab- 
lishment of the patriarchal idea to the final going 
down into Egypt. 

It is in the nature of women to please men, but 
they have not been allowed through the centuries 
to please men in their own way. Man wanted 
to be pleased according to his idea — and women, 

[231 ] 



CHILD AND COUNTRY 

in accepting that, have prostituted themselves. 
Men have united with submissive women to bring 
forth children farther and farther from the dream. 
Man's idea is possession; that which is possessed 
is not free. Man's thought is to make woman con- 
form to his ideas; and that which conforms, at 
once betrays the first law of the growth to great- 
ness — that of being true to one's self. 

The veil, the mouth-veil, the crippled foot, the 
harem, the barred lattice, the corset, the eunuch, 
the denial of education to women, the very text 
of the marriage-rites in all countries, are man's 
ideas of keeping woman for himself, from herself. 
The Orient is rotted with this conception. 

Would you like to know where man's ideas — 
man's plan of Conception — is most utterly out- 
raged? In the coming of Messiahs. The Josephs 
are mainly dangling. They are in the mere pas- 
sage of events, having to do neither with heights 
nor depths. 

One of the deepest human instincts of the male 
is that woman is a wanton. It breaks out still 
in the best of men, wherever the sex-principle 
overpowers the mind. This is well-covered 
ground. I would suggest only that the present 
horrible chaos of human affairs, while directly 
the fault of the absence of rational idealism in 
the world, has been brought about in reality by 
the man-pressure which for centuries has fallen 
upon the nature of woman. I hold it as one of 

[232] 



THE HIGHEST OF THE ARTS 

the miracles that great women still move among 
us; and that to-day in every movement and voice 
of women at large in the world, one perceives 
that the transition is on. . . . 

The great love story can only be founded upon 
liberty. Bring the plan of serfdom to a woman's 
nature, and one of two things takes place within 
her — submission utterly or outwardly. The sons 
of the submissive are neither conquerors of self 
nor takers of cities. The outwardly submissive 
woman may inwardly contain and foster a great 
dream — indeed, the fruits of these dreams have 
come to be — but more often the heart is filled with 
secret hatreds. Sons of hatred may be sons of 
strength, but the fire they burn with is red and 
not white. 

Once I expressed the conviction that if the 
right man talked to a roomful of young, unmar- 
ried women upon the great ideals of motherhood 
— and his words were wise and pure enough — that 
not one of the women in the room would bring 
forth the children afterward that would have come 
to them had they not been there to listen. I be- 
lieve that many young women of the arriving gen- 
eration are tremendously eager to listen, and to 
answer the dream. . . . 

I looked in humility and great tenderness upon 
those pure feminine elements in the Chapel, await- 
ing as usual what I should ask or say. When I 

thought that some time they would be mothers, 

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it came with a rush of emotion — that I had 
neither words nor art, nor strength nor purity 
to make them see the almost divine possibilities 
of their future. For years I had written in the 
hope of lifting the ideals of such as these ; dreamed 
of writing at last with such clarity and truth that 
they could not be the same after reading ; but it is 
different writing to the great outer Abstraction, 
than talking face to face in one's Study. Some 
of the things said that day are written here with- 
out quotations : 

... It is all soil and seed again. The world 
to-day has not entered the outer courts even of 
the physical beauty of romance. The lower the 
orders of human understanding, the easier it is 
for the young men and women to accept their 
mates. It is often a matter of propinquity — 
the handiest. The women of the lower classes do 
not bring an alabaster bowl to one certain spring 
of pure water. There seems to be a red enchant- 
ment upon the many — the nearest will do. The 
great loves of the world have not thus come to 
be. Great women, carrying the whitest fires, have 
waited for the One; they have listened for a cer- 
tain voice. Their hearts knew. There was no 
chance. When they were ready, the One arrived. 

The lovelier we become in conduct and the 
higher we turn in aspiration — the more beauti- 
fully are we prepared for the great services of 
Romance. As a race we have only touched our 

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THE HIGHEST OF THE ARTS 

lips to the cup of its beauty and f ruitfulness. . . . 
Would you, who understand so well what culture 
has done for corn and roses, forget the mysteries 
of your own great being — rush blindly as the 
world does into the arms that first beckon, fol- 
lowing the laws that have made you the most su- 
perb of animals, forgetting the laws that have 
made you living souls? 

I would have you study the lineage of Mary, 
the wonderful care with which it was written, even 
to include that blent flame of earth and heaven 
which was Ruth; I would have you read again 
the stories of Gautama and Jesus, and of the 
mothers of the prophets. The stories of the com- 
ing of Messiahs are always the greatest stories in 
the world. . . . And then we see the great stony 
fields of humanity — the potential mass in which 
the great ones of the future are to rise. Their 
matings are makeshifts; their brief honeymoons 
are matters from which the finer world turns its 
eyes. 

. . . For many days you have come in here 
quietly at this time, taking your seats together, 
and listening so cheerfully to what has passed. 
You know as well as I that there have been mo- 
ments in which the stones of the Chapel walls 
faded from our eyes, and that which we saw in 
each other was not that which we see as we pass in 
colder moments in the street. We have had mo- 
ments here when it seemed that any thought was 

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easily to be comprehended — that it had but to be 
spoken to be embraced. . . . There have been mo- 
ments, too, sudden spontaneities when we were 
pure givers, when there was love in our hearts for 
all beings, and we were strong to answer any 
call. 

It is not that which we pass coldly on the 
street that has gladdened me so often and so 
strangely in your coming — but those mysteries 
within, those arousings deeper than brain, that do 
away so peremptorily with all systems of teacher 
and student; which show us one in meaning and 
one in aim. ... It is tragic that the romances 
of the world so seldom touch these high mysteries. 
We feel the Old Mother drawing us together — 
all her great blind forces for renewing her lands 
and seas and realms of air. But we forget that 
the animals follow this; the myriads of unawak- 
ened men and women follow this; the products 
of this are used for every waste and violence. Na- 
ture brings them in, and then destructive princi- 
ples play upon them. They are dealt with in great 
numbers, because individuals have not emerged. 
They have slain them twenty thousand the day 
in Europe of late — the bodies of men whose 
mothers in the main have followed the blind forces 
of Nature, and no more. Nature will replenish 
these losses. 

Perceive, too: The many have not even sensed 
the beauties of Nature. This physical being of 

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THE HIGHEST OF THE ARTS 

ours which the Old Mother has raised from the 
earth that a God might be built within it — even 
the beauty of this is not yet fulfilled — much less 
the powers of the mind which we have touched 
— much less that radiance of spirit which has made 
our highest moments together so memorable. 

. . . You would be mothers — that is the high- 
est of the arts. The making of books is childish 
and temporal compared to that. Mothering of 
men — that is the highest art. . . . Yet we do 
not make books blindly. For years we labour 
and watch the world ; for years we gather together 
our thoughts and observations of men and Na- 
ture; studiously we travel and willingly at last 
we learn to suffer. Suffering brings it all home 
to us; suffering connects together all our treas- 
ures, so that we see their inter-relations and our 
meaning to them all. At last (and this, if we have 
been called in the beginning) we dare to write our 
book. It fails. Again and again we fail — that 
is the splendid unifying force, working upon us. 
So far, we have only brought into the world our 
half -gods. Failures melt us into the solution of 
the world. . . . We have learned to welcome 
suffering now; we have detached ourselves from 
the shams that the world can give. We have 
learned that the world cannot pay in kind for 
any noble action — that the spirit of human hearts 
alone can answer any great striving. . . . We go 
apart to the wildernesses to listen. In the sum- 

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mit of our strength, the voice begins to speak — 
the Guru's voice. 

We are but instruments for the making of 
books. We are but listening surfaces for the 
voice to play upon. At last and at best, we have 
merely made ourselves fine enough to be used. 
Then our book is done. We have no part in 
it afterward. If we have done well, the world 
will serve it in God's good time. . . . And that 
is the low and the temporal art. Mere bodies of 
books come into the world in thousands. They 
move their little season and pass. Even the half- 
gods only rise and stir and pass away. But when 
the half-gods go, the Gods arrive. 

. . . You would not do less than this to bring 
forth men — you who have the call. . . . You 
must learn the world — be well grounded in the 
world. You need not forget the Old Mother. 
Your feet are of clay — but you must have the 
immortal gleam in your eyes. Do not forget the 
Old Mother — yet it is only when the Father ap- 
pears that you can see her as she really is. It 
is the light of His spirit that has shown you the 
passion of the rose, the goodness of the wheat, 
the holiness of the forests. By His quickening you 
are hushed in the beauty of the Mother. . . . 
The myriads of makers of books have not yet 
sensed this beauty. 

There is a different love of Nature. We cry 
aloud in our surface ecstasies — that the Old 

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THE HIGHEST OF THE ARTS 

Mother was never so beautiful, her contours and 
colourings. We travel far for a certain vista, or 
journey alone as if making a pilgrimage to a cer- 
tain nave of woodland where a loved hand has 
touched us. . . . But this lifted love of nature is 
different from the Pipes of Pan, from all sensu- 
ous beauty. The love of Nature that I mean is 
different even from wooings and winnings and all 
that beauteous bewilderment of sex-opposites — 
different from all save the immortal romances. 

I wonder if I can suggest what is in the heart; 
it cannot be more than a suggestion, for these 
things have not to do with words. You who have 
felt it may know ; and in those high moments you 
were very far from the weight and symbols of 
Nature, but very close to her quickening spirit. 
... I walked for hours alone, through different 
small communities of beech and oak and elm ; and 
on a slope before my eyes there was a sudden low 
clearing of vapour, as if a curtain were lifted, 
and I saw a thicket of dogwood in the mystery 
of resurrection, the stone of the sepulchre rolled 
away. 

I do not know to this day if they were really 
there. I have never found the trees again. ... I 
was sitting here one fall night, a South Wind 
straight from the great water, and the mignonette 
came in and lingeringly passed. The garden was 
behind to the North. I went to it and it gave me 
nothing, moved around it, and there was no respi- 

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CHILD AND COUNTRY 



ration of the heaven-breath. Yet the oneness and 
the spirit of life had touched me from the miracle, 
like the ineffable presence of the dogwood in 
bloom on that fairy slope. 

The love of Nature, the different love, is a 
matter of our own receptivity. If we are brave 
enough, or sweet enough within, we will not re- 
quire the touch of the senses, nor Nature's master- 
strokes to awaken us. We will not need to leave 
our rooms, for it is all here — in the deep gleam of 
polished strength of the hickory axe-handle, in the 
low light of the blade, in stone wall and oaken 
sill, in leather and brass and pottery, in the respi- 
ration of the burning wood, and veritably massed 
upon the sweeping distance from the window. It 
is because we are coarse and fibrous and confined 
in the sick weight of flesh that we do not stand 
in a kind of creative awe before the lowliest mys- 
tery of our physical sight. 

Do you know that there is a different fragrance, 
a different manner of burning to each tree, whose 
parts you bring to the open camp fire or your own 
hearth; that some woods shriek at this second 
death after the cutting, that others pass with gra- 
cious calm, and still others give up their dearest 
reality, at the moment of breaking under the fire, 
like the released spirit of a saint that was articu- 
late heretofore only in beautiful deeds? 

The willow burns with quiet meagre warmth, 
like a lamb led to slaughter, but with innocence 

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THE HIGHEST OF THE ARTS 

feigned, keeping her vain secrets to the last. The 
oak resists, as he resists the axe, having spent 
all his energy in building a stout and perfect body, 
proud of his twisted arms and gnarled hands. 
The pine rebels, and noisily to the swift end, say- 
ing: "I do not believe in cremation. I believe 
in breaking down alone and apart, as I lived. I 
am clean without the fire. You should let me 
alone, and now I shall not let you think nor talk 
of real things until I am gone." . . . Each with 
its fragrance — the elm, the silentest and sweetest 
of all. The elm has forgotten her body in spread- 
ing her grace to the stars; the elm for aspiration, 
loving the starlight so well that she will not 
hide it from the ground; most beautiful of all, 
save the beech in winter, a swift and saintly pass- 
ing of a noble life. The maple warms you in 
spite of herself, giving up her secrets which are not 
all clean — a lover of fatness, her shade too dense, 
a hater of winter, because she is bare, and the 
secret of all ugliness in her nudity. (The true 
tree-lover is never a stranger to the winter woods.) 

And the mothering beech, with her soft incense, 
her heart filling the room with warmth and light, 
her will to warm the world; the mothering beech, 
a healer and a shelterer, a lover like that Magda- 
len whose sin was loving much. She gives her 
body to Gods and men — and most sweetly to the 
fire, her passing naked and unashamed. 

The different love of Nature that the child 

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knows instinctively; that young men and maid- 
ens forget in the heat of themselves — but that 
comes again to us if we grow decently older; 
in rock and thicket, in the voices of running wa- 
ter, in every recess of woodland and arch of 
shore — not the Pipes of Pan, but the mysteries of 
God, not sensuousness, but the awakening of a 
spirit that has slumbered — the illumination, sud- 
den and splendid, that all is One — that Nature is 
the plane of manifestation for the infinite and 
perfect story of God; that Nature is the table 
which God has filled to overflowing — this is a 
suggestion, a beginning of the lifted love of 
Nature. . . . 

If they beckon to you, the trees on the horizon 
(and God be with you if there are none) ; if they 
seem to be calling to you, do not fail them, do not 
wait too long. For surely that time will come 
when they will cease to call to your heart. They 
will not have changed, but you will have gone too 
far back among the spectres and illusions of de- 
tached things to know that they are calling. And 
be very sure you will never find the love of God 
in the eyes of passing men — if you have forgotten 
our Mother. 

. . . Yet Nature alone is but the lowliest of 
the three caskets. I would not have you miss 
a breath of her beauty — but upon and within it, 
I would build the great dream of the coming of 
one from the Father's House. The Coming to 

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THE HIGHEST OF THE ARTS 

you. . . . Would you hesitate to make ready for 
that Guest ? . . . The thousands come in and out 
and pass to the unprepared houses. They are 
mute — suffering is unspoken in their eyes. Even 
their faces and hands are unfinished. They leave 
no gift nor message. Nature who brought them 
does not spare them from the infinite causes of 
death. 

. . . Would you hesitate to go into the wil- 
derness to meet such a Guest? . . . But you will 
not hear the call to the wilderness unless your 
heart is listening — unless your limbs are mighty 
for the Quest — the little things of life silenced, 
the passions of the self put away. 

There is beauty in the wilderness — the beauty 
of the Old Mother is there in the stillness. . . . 
Would you not go up into the hills for your 
great passion? Would you not lift your arms 
for the highest; would you not integrate the fire 
of martyrdoms in your breast, that you may not 
be destroyed by the lustre of that which descends 
to you? Would you be a potter's vessel to con- 
tain the murky floods of the lowlands — when you 
may became an alabaster bowl held to the source 
of all purity and power? 

Do you know that a woman with a dream in 
her eyes may hold forth her arms and command 
heaven as no man, as no mere artist, can do? Do 
you know that her arms shall be filled with glory, 
according to her dream? 

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Did I say that you must go into the wilderness 
alone *? . . . There is one to add his call to yours. 
There is the other half of your circle. He sel- 
dom comes first. Pan comes first to test you. 
By the very spirit that gives you the different 
love of Nature, you shall know your Lord when 
he comes. He is searching, too. Perhaps you 
shall know him by the Quest in his eyes. He, too, 
is looking for the white presences. . . . You must 
know the world — so that you may not be bewil- 
dered. You must not be caught in the brown 
study of Pan. 

This earthy one is very subtle. He will try 
to take you first. He will try to rub the dream- 
ing and the Quest from your eyes. He will stand 
between you and the white presences yonder in 
the hills. Sometimes he is very near to those 
who try to be simple. There are many who call 
him a God still. You must never forget that bad 
curve of him below the shoulders. Forever, the 
artists lying to themselves have tried to cover 
that bad curve of Pan as it sweeps down into the 
haunches of a goat. Pan is the first devil you 
meet when you reach that rectitude of heart which 
dares to be mother of souls. 

Whole races of artists have lied about Pan, be- 
cause they listened to the haunting music of his 
pipes. It calls sweetly, but does not satisfy. 
How many Pan has called and left them sitting 
among the rocks with mindless eyes and hands 

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THE HIGHEST OF THE ARTS 

that fiddle with emptiness! . . . Pan is so sad 
and level-eyed. He does not explain. He does 
not promise — too wise for that. He lures and 
enchants. He makes you pity him with a pity 
that is red as the lusts of the flesh. 

You may come to know that red in the breast. 
It is the red that drives away the dream of peace. 
. . . Yet the pity of him deludes you. You look 
again and again, and the curve of his back does 
not break the dream as before. You think that 
because you pity him, you cannot fall; and all 
the pull of the ground tells you that your very 
thought of falling is a breath from the old shames 
— your dead, but as yet unburied heritage, from 
generations that learned the lie to self. 

You touch the hair of the goat, and say it is 
Nature. But Pan is not Nature — a hybrid, half 
of man's making, rather. Your eyes fall to the 
cloven hoof, but return to the level, steady gaze, 
smiling with such soft sadness that your heart 
quickens for him, and you listen, as he says : "All 
Gods have animal bodies and cloven hoofs, but I 
alone have dared to reveal mine." . . . "How 
brave you are !" your heart answers, and the throb 
of him bewilders you with passion. . . . You 
who are so high must fall far, when you let go. 

. . . And many of your generation shall want 
to fall. Pan has come to you because you dare. 
. . . You have murdered the old shames, you have 
torn down the ancient and mouldering churches. 

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You do not require the blood, the thorn, the spikes, 
but I wonder if even you of a glorious generation, 
do not still require the Cross*? ... It is because 
you see so surely and are level-eyed, that Pan is 
back in the world for you; and it is very strange 
but true that you must first meet Pan and pass him 
by, before you can enter into the woodlands with 
that valid lord of Nature, whose back is a chal- 
lenge to aspiration, and whose feet are of the pur- 
ity of the saints. 

. . . He is there, or it may be, if you are not 
through with the world, he is waiting in the 
wilderness. You must learn the hardest of all 
lessons — to wait. You must pass by all others 
who are not true to the dream. You must inte- 
grate your ideal of him— as you dream of the Shin- 
ing One who will become the third of the Trinity. 
He must be true to the laws of beauty that the 
Old Mother has shown you. If he is less than the 
dream, pass on — for though you travel together 
for years, at the end you will look into the eyes 
of a stranger. . . . They are for those who have 
no dreams — the dalliances that dull our senses, 
the Arrivals for whom another is waiting. 

. . . Perhaps in that solitary place, you turn 
to find him beside you. There is a hush upon the 
world as you meet his eyes. . . . The wilderness 
is bursting into verdure and singing. . . . He will 
not lure you to the low earth; he will love you 
best when your arms turn upward in aspiration. 

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THE HIGHEST OF THE ARTS 

... A whirlpool, a vortex — this is but the begin- 
ning of ecstasy. 

This is your hour. The flame that glows upon 
your mighty mating is from the future. The 
woman is a love-instrument now, played upon by 
creative light. This is the highest mystery of Na- 
ture — all hitherto is background for this hour. 
The flight of the bee-queens, the lifting of wings 
through all the woodland festivals, the turning of 
comets back to the sun — such are but symbols. In 
the distance loom the mountains — and beyond 
them is the ocean of time and space. 



[247] 



22 

MIRACLES 



FROM within and without for many 
months, promptings have come to me on 
the subject of Order, which mystics de- 
note as the most excellent thing in the 
Universe. ... I remember once emerging from 
a zone of war in Asia to enter a city untouched 
by it. The order in that city was to me like the 
subsiding of a fever. The most terrible picture 
of disorder that the world can show is a battlefield 
of human beings. 

Order has to do with peace of mind; disorder 
everywhere is a waste of force. In a purely men- 
tal sense, the cultivation of Order begins to appear 
essential to the worker, as he approaches the height 
of his powers and realises that there is so much to 
do, and that life here is both brief and precarious. 
Order, however, is larger than a mere mental mat- 
ter. Its abiding-place is in the lasting fabric of 
man and nature. Evolution in its largest sense is 
the bringing of Order out of Chaos. The word 
Cosmos means order, as stated once before. 

[248] 



MIRACLES 



One descends into the terrors of disorder, finan- 
cial and otherwise, in building his house. When 
I look back to the conditions that existed on this 
bit of Lake-front three years ago — the frog-hol- 
lows, tiling, the wasting bluffs, excavation, thirty- 
five cords of boulders unloaded perversely — 
the mere enumeration chafes like grit upon sur- 
faces still sore. ... I have sadly neglected the 
study of house-building in this book. It would 
not do now. The fact is, I don't know how to 
build a house, but one learns much that one didn't 
know about men and money. I sat here in the 
main, working with my back to the building. At 
times the approach of a contractor upon the Study- 
walk gave me a panic like a hangman's step; often 
again as he discussed the weather, all phases and 
possibilities, reviewing the past season, before tell- 
ing what he came for, I boiled over like a small 
pot, but noiselessly for the most part. With pene- 
trative eye, distant but careful observations, I 
would refer him to the dream which the architect 
had drawn. . . . When the different contractors 
came a last time with bills, I would take the ac- 
counts and look studiously into a little book, hold- 
ing it severely to the light. After much conning, I 
would announce that my accounts tallied with 
theirs in the main. And when they had departed, 
finished and paid with another man's money, — 
standing alone, tormented with the thought of how 

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CHILD AND COUNTRY 



little money really can pay for, I wanted to rush 
after them and thank them for going away. 

In the evening, when the last workman was 
gone, I used to venture into the piling structure. 
The chaos of it would often bring a fever around 
the eyes, like that which a man wakes with, after 
a short and violent night. Then on those evenings 
when something seemed accomplished that gave a 
line to the blessed silence of the finished thing, 
and I found myself turning in pleasure to it — the 
thought would come that it wasn't really mine; 
that after all the detail remained of paying for 
it. I used to go from the building and grounds 
then — cutting myself clear from it, as a man 
would snip with scissors the threads of some net 
that entangled him. I don't breathe freely even 
now in the meshes of possession. 

I used to wonder at the confidence and delight 
which the other members of the household took in 
the completing house. They regarded it as the 
future home. . . . One by one the different sets 
of workmen came and went. I am in awe of men 
who plaster houses for a living — and for pennies 
the hour. Always they arrive at the very summit 
of disorganisation — -one house after another 
through life — to accept money and call their work 
paid for. . . . There is something to play with 
in masonry — every stone is different — but to learn 
order by lathing and plastering ! Dante missed it 

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MIRACLES 



from his inventions. I do not count the plasterers 
paid — nor the house paid for. . . . 

One evening I went through the structure when 
all but the final finishing was over. I saw it all 
and was in a daze. The town regarded it as hav- 
ing to do with me; the establishment was con- 
nected with my name; yet I stood in a daze, re- 
garding the pool and the balcony and the fire- 
places — finding them good. . . . The lumberman 
had outlined a plan by which the years would auto- 
matically restore me to my own, but I am unable 
still to see how these things are done. I would 
go to any length to help him in ways familiar to 
me, but I could never stake him to a stone house. 
And that was not all. I didn't look for the bit 
of Lake shore bluff. I merely chose it to smoke 
on, because it was still — and presently they called 
it mine. I didn't look for the architect, yet what 
he did, his voice and letters full of unvarying 
pleasure, I could never hope to do for him. . . . 
Yet here was the stone house — a week or two 
more from this night of the dazed inspection, we 
were supposed to move in. 

The old Spanish house in Luzon was quite as 
real to me. It was in that verdant and shadowy 
interior that I first saw the tropical heart of a 
human habitation. But there was no wired glass; 
its roof was the sky. I remember the stars, the 
palms and the running water. A woman stood 
there by the fountain one night — mantilla, dark 

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CHILD AND COUNTRY 

eyes and falling water. It was there in the palm- 
foliage that I plighted my troth to the patio. . . . 

And here was its northern replica — sunken area 
paved with gold-brown brick, the gurgle of water 
among the stones. Some one said that you could 
see right through from the road to the Lake, 
through the rear and front doors. I wanted it so 
— a house to see through like an honest face. 
Some one said that the whole house could be lit 
by firelight. I wanted it so. 

"When we move in " one of the children 

began. 

I shivered. . . . But of one thing I was certain. 
If the lumberman didn't move in, we would. . . . 

A certain Order came out of it all. A man 
should build something beside his house, while he 
is at it. That something should enable him to 
build another (if he ever had to do it again) 
without raising his voice ; without losing his faith 
in men; without binding himself to the place or 
the structure by any cords that would hurt more 
than a day or two if they were cut. . . . The 
house is a home. It wasn't the lumberman who 
moved in. The rooms are warm with firelight at 
this moment . . . and yet with my back still 
turned upon it and the grinding and rending of 
chaos ended, I arise to remark with calmness and 
cheer that I would rent for indefinite generations 
rather than build again. 

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MIRACLES 



There is the order of the small man — a baneful 
thing in its way, sometimes a terrible and tragic 
thing. The narrow-templed Order which has de- 
stroyed our forests to make places for rows of 
sugar-beets. Then there is the order of Commerce 
which in multiplying and handling duplicates of 
manufacture, has found Order an economical ne- 
cessity. Let that be confined to its own word, 
Efficiency. 

The true individual rebels against the narrow- 
templed Order, rushes to the other extreme; and 
we observe a laughable phenomenon — the eccen- 
tricities of genius. In truth these eccentricities 
merely betoken the chaos of the larger calibre. 
Order in the case of the genius is a superb result, 
because of the broader surfaces brought under cul- 
tivation. "The growth of the human spirit is 
from simplicity to complication, and up to simplic- 
ity again, each circle in a nobler dimension of 
progress. There is the simplicity of the peasant 
and the simplicity of the seer. Between these two 
lie all the confusion and alarm of life, a passage 
of disorder, well designated Self-consciousness." * 

Cleanliness of the body is said to be one of the 

first rules for the following of a certain religious 

plan of life. This is not the case exactly; rather 

one of the first things that occur to a man on the 

road to sanctity is that he must keep his body 

clean; second, that he must keep his mind clean; 

* From Midstream. 
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CHILD AND COUNTRY 



third, that he must begin to put his spiritual house 
in order. This is a basic principle of occultism. 
We must prove faithful in the small things, first. 

I rode over to a little cottage occupied by two 
young men who came here in the interests of 
writing careers. They had talent, soul, brain, 
balance, the unmistakable ignitions of the New 
Age. In a word, they were large-calibred men, 
whose business in life was to put in order a fine 
instrument for expression. Their cottage was not 
orderly. They did not seem to mind; in fact, they 
appeared to disdain such trifles. They were at the 
age when men may eat or drink anything and at 
all times without apparently disturbing the cen- 
tres of energy. They were, in fact, doing large 
quantities of work every day — for boys. Yet 
daily in their work, I was finding the same litter 
and looseness of which their cottage was but an 
unmistakable suggestion. In fact, the place was 
a picture of their minds. . . . We are each given 
a certain area of possibility. Not one in a million 
human beings even roughly makes the most of it. 
The organisation of force and the will to use it 
must be accomplished in childhood and youth. 
This driving force is spiritual. 

In this sense, all education is religion. Work 
is that, as well. It is man's interpretation, not 
the fault of the religion, that has set apart six 
days to toil in the earth and one day to worship 
God. A man worships God best in his work. His 

[254] 



MIRACLES 



work suffers if he misses worship one day in seven, 
to say nothing of six. I do not mean piety. A 
feeling of devoutness does not cover at all the 
sense I mean. A man's spirituality, as I would 
reckon it, has to do with the power he can bring 
into the world of matter from the great universe 
of spiritual force which is God, or the emanation 
of God, as all the great religions reverently agree. 
I do not mean to bring cults or creeds or hymns 
or affirmations into the schools. This driving 
force which all the great workmen know and bow 
before, is above and beyond man-uttered inter- 
pretations, above all separateness, even above any- 
thing like a complete expression in matter as yet. 
One day the workman realises that he has fash- 
ioned something greater than himself — that he 
has said or sung or written or painted something 
that he did not know he knew, and that his few 
years of training in the world did not bring to 
him. He turns within to do it again. ... I 
would have the children begin at once to turn 
within. In awe and humility, I beg you to believe 
that as a vast human family, we have but wet our 
ankles in an infinite ocean of potentiality designed 
for our use; that by giving ourselves to it we be- 
come at once significant and inimitable; that its 
expression through us cannot be exactly repro- 
duced by any other instrument ; and that if we fail 
to become instruments of it, the final harmony 
must lack our part, which no other can play. 

[255] 



CHILD AND COUNTRY 



That which we see by means of an optic nerve 
is but the stone, but the pit, of any object, a de- 
tached thing, which can be held in mind after the 
eye turns away, only by a sensible retaining of 
memory, as an object is held in the hand. There 
is a higher vision — and the word imagination ex- 
presses it almost as well as any other — by which 
the thing can be seen, not as a detached object, 
but in its relation to the whole. 

There is a book on the table. You give it a 
day or a year. You find your utmost limitations 
expanded if it is great enough and you can give 
yourself freely enough. This book is no more a 
mere object upon a board. Its white lines are as 
long as the spires of magnetism which stretch up 
from the polar centre of the earth to the isolated 
northern stars. 

You have read the book. Its separateness and 
detachment for you has ended. That which you 
held in your hand was but the pit, the stone. . . . 
You can read the whole story of the tree in the pit ; 
the whole story of creation in any stone. The 
same magnetism that rises in spires from the poles 
of the earth and is seen by the optic nerve under 
certain conditions of atmosphere, rises from your 
brow, pours forth from the finger-ends of man. 
The actual skull of a human mind is but the centre 
of a flame of force, as seen by the truer vision, 
and the colour and the beauty of it is determined 

[256] ' 



MIRACLES 



by its instrumentation of the driving energy which 
gives life to all men and things. 

Every object and every man tells the same story 
with its different texture, with its own tongue. 
One plan is written in every atom, woven in and 
through and around us in a veritable robe of glory. 
. . . The farther a man goes in vision, the more 
he sees that the plan is for joy; that the plan is 
one; that separateness and self-sense is illusion and 
pain; that one story is written in every stone and 
leaf and star and heart — the one great love story 
of the universe. 

Miracles'? They are everywhere; every day to 
one who enters upon the higher vision. I heard a 
young man speak for an hour recently— rising to 
superb rhythm, his voice modulated, his mind con- 
structive and inspired. Three years ago he was 
inarticulate. No process of intellectual training 
could have brought him even the beginnings of 
mastery in this period — or in thirty years. He 
had listened until he was full, and then had 
spoken. 

Miracles every day here. I am sometimes in 
awe of these young beings who show me such 
wisdom, in years when the human child is sup- 
posed to be callow and fatuous, his voice even a 
distraction. ... It is only that they have come 
to see the illusion of detached things; to relate 
and cohere all together by the use of the power 
that seeks to flood through them. I am in awe 

[257] 



CHILD AND COUNTRY 



before them many times. The child that can see 
fairies in wood and water and stone shall see so 
very soon the Ineffable Seven and the downcast 
immortals in the eyes of friends and strangers. 



[258] 



23 

MORE ABOUT ORDER 



THE Order of the narrow-templed men is 
not to be criticised in itself. In fact it 
must be accomplished before the fresh 
complications and the resulting larger 
dimensions of faculty may be entered upon. The 
error lies in the hardening of the perceptions of 
children, through the existing methods of purely 
mental training; and in the manner of adult life, 
wherein the one imperious aim is dollar-making. 

The men employed in the building here worked 
ten hours the day. No man lives who can do 
a thing well for ten hours a day as a habit. The 
last two or three hours of such a working-day 
is but a prolongation of strain and hunger. Here 
is a little town full of old young men. There is 
no help for him who "soldiers," since that is the 
hardest work. If you look at the faces of a half- 
hundred men engaged upon any labour, you will 
observe that the tiredest faces belong to those of 
the structurally inert — the ones who have to sur- 

[259] 



CHILD AND COUNTRY 



mount themselves as well as their tasks, and who 
cannot forget themselves in their activity. 

In many of the modern mills, they called it a 
fine thing when the labour hours were shortened 
from ten to eight. As I see it, the man who is 
allowed to do the same thing every second or two 
for eight hours presents a picture of the purest 
tragedy. 

Two of the primary causes of human misery are 
competitive education of children and the endless 
multiplication of articles of trade by mechanical 
means. Of the first only a thought or two need 
be added. I have suggested the spirit of the 
Chapel, in its upholding of the one whom I under- 
took lightly to reprimand for repeating a technical 
error. All the others sustained him and waited 
almost breathlessly for me to cease, so that I sud- 
denly found myself out of order with one entity, 
as it were. 

The big plan of unity and brotherhood has been 
enunciated again and again — from the tub of Dio- 
genes, from Socrates and his golden-haired disci- 
ple ; from that superb slave, Epictetus, whose spirit 
has since been a tonic for all races of men; from 
the deep-hearted emperor Aurelius — and even be- 
fore these, whom we have the temerity to call 
Pagans. Then the Master Jesus came down, and 
left the story told more clearly and perfectly than 
any. 

A loaf of bread may be leavened by yeast over 

[260] 



MORE ABOUT ORDER 



night, but it requires thousands of years to leaven 
a planet with a new spirtual power. We look at 
the world just now and are inclined to say that it 
is at its worst. In truth, this is the hour before 
daybreak. In every land men are watching the 
East. Already some have cried out at the false 
dawns ; and in their misery afterward have turned 
back hopelessly to the strife — immersed them- 
selves again in the long night of war. 

But the causes of war are still operative in our 
midst, and they are more terrible than trenches in 
Flanders, because their effects must still be reck- 
oned with after the madmen of Europe have found 
their rest. The idea of Brotherhood has been 
brooding over the planet for thousands of years. 
It tells us that all life is one ; that we do the best 
unto ourselves by turning outward our best to 
others, and that which is good for the many is 
good for the one; that harmony and beauty and 
peace is in the plan if we turn outward from self 
to service. 

Yet behold the millions of children taught at 
this hour on a competitive plan that reverses every 
idealism and shocks every impulse toward unity. 
I would count a desperate evil (one to be eradi- 
cated if possible by heroic measure) the first 
competitive thought that insinuated itself in the 
minds of those who come to the Chapel. Yet you 
and I have suffered this for years and years in our 
bringing up; and the millions behind us — every 

[261] 



CHILD AND COUNTRY 



day, every hour, in every class, they are stimulated 
by this baneful energy out of the descent of man. 
Thus we are still making wars. The child goes 
forth established in the immorality of taking what 
he can and giving only what he must — against 
every call, every fragrance, every flash of light 
from the new social order and the dream that shall 
bring us nearer home as a race. 

Again as adults we are slaves to the ruin of 
mechanically multiplied things. On every hand, 
we are stimulated to believe that our worth is in 
material posessions ; school and press and platform 
inciting us to the lie that we prosper by adding 
things unto ourselves. ... A certain automobile 
factory decides to build one hundred thousand ma- 
chines within a year. It is almost like a cataclysm 
when one begins to consider the maiming of the 
human spirit which follows in the wake of such a 
commercial determination. Mortgages, the im- 
pulse to stretch the means, the binding slavery to 
matter to pay, the rivalry of neighbours, actual 
lapses of integrity, the lie, the theft, the desire, the 
spoliation of children, the lowered vibration of the 
house, the worry, the fear — to say nothing of the 
ten thousand factory workers, each of whom has 
built nothing. 

There are men in that great mound of mills who 
have merely used a foot, or a wrist, or an eye. 
Some of these good mechanics hold a file, others 
screw bolts, for eight hours; the many serve steel 

[262] 



MORE ABOUT ORDER 



to the machines and pluck it forth — eight hours 
each day. Fifty men of the ten thousand have a 
concept of the finished task; the rest have but a 
blind piece to do again and again, until their 
Order is madness, and all the faculties of the hu- 
man will are rendered automatic for money, as if 
any form of wages could pay for these hells of 
routine. 

Each man's sense of origins, his faculties won 
from Nature, his individuality and dispensations 
of human spirit, all are deadened. And for this 
men are said to be paid in dollars ; the mill is said 
to be a marvel for efficiency. 

The mercantile directorate that gathers every 
four days, to clip a wage here and stretch a mar- 
gin there, is innocent; the man who knocks down 
another for his purse is but an erring, short-sighted 
child ; the hordes who weaken themselves in waste 
and indulgence are clean-hearted, since they play 
fast and loose with what is in a sense their own 
property — but the efficiency system which uses 
men this way, is a slayer of more than mind and 
body. It commits the psychological crime. 

A man who has nothing but money to give is 
bound to be vulgar; and he is never so vulgar as 
when he thinks he can pay in money for a fine task 
well done. The man who does an excellent bit of 
production from his own centres of being, puts his 
enduring self in it — a self said to be fashioned not 

[263] 



CHILD AND COUNTRY 



of clay. I repeat his work can only be paid for in 
kind. You cannot buy any bit of fine spirit with 
money, no gift of love or friendship, no turning 
toward you of any creative force. That which 
goes to you for a price, is of the dimension of the 
price — matter yields unto you matter. You can 
only purchase a fine instrument, or a fine horse, or 
the love of woman or child, by presenting a sur- 
face that answers. You possess them in so far as 
you liberate their secrets of expression. 

I moved with a rich man about an estate which 
he had bought — and he didn't know the dogwood 
from the beech. I doubt if he saw anything but 
bark and green, shade and sun — a kind of twilight 
curtain dropped before his eyes. There was a 
low hill with a mass of stones grouped on top. 

"I shall have those taken away," he said idly. 

"Why?" 

"Why, they're just stones " 

I didn't answer. . . . He wouldn't have be- 
lieved me, nor possibly his landscape gardener. 
He couldn't see through the twilight curtain the 
bleach or the tan of the rock pile, its natural bal- 
ance — that it was a challenge to a painter. The 
place would be all hedged and efficient presently. 
He spoiled everything; yet he would have known 
how to deal with you had you brought to him a 
commercial transaction — the rest of his surfaces 
were covered in a thick, leathery coat, very valu- 
able in a septic-tank where air and light must be 

[264] 



MORE ABOUT ORDER 



excluded. . . . This man had another country- 
estate in the East and still another in the South. 
I would point out merely that he did not truly 
own them. 

Rather it would seem that one must spend years 
to be worthy of communion with one hillside of 
dogwood. According to what you can receive of 
any beauty, is the measure of your worthiness. 

I remember my first adventure with a player- 
piano. I was conscious of two distinct emotions 
— the first a wearing tension lest some one should 
come to interrupt, and the second that I did not 
deserve this, that I had not earned it. . . . The 
instrument had that excellence of the finely 
evolved things. It seemed to me that the work- 
men had done something that money should not 
be able to buy. One does not buy such voices 
and genius for the assembly of tones. It seemed 
to me that I should have spent years of study to 
be worthy of this. There is a difference, as deep 
as life, in the listening and in the doing. Some- 
thing of the plan of it all, is in that difference. I 
found that the spirit I brought was more designed 
to be worthy of this happiness, than any money- 
could be. I found that a man does not do real 
work for money. That which he takes for his 
labour is but the incident of bread and hire, but 
the real thing he puts into a fine task, must be 
given. One after another, for many decades, 
workmen had given their best to perfect this thing 

[265] 



CHILD AND COUNTRY 

that charmed me. Every part from Bach's scale 
to the pneumatic boxes in the making of a piano 
and player had been drawn from the spirit of 
things by men who made themselves ready to re- 
ceive. They had toiled until they were fine ; then 
they received. 

It was something the same as one feels when he 
has learned to read; when the first messages come 
home to him from black and white, and he realises 
that all the world's great literature is open to his 
hand. Again the great things are gifts. You can- 
not pay in matter for a spiritual thing; you can 
only pay in kind. I saw that the brutalisation of 
the player-piano resulted from people who thought 
they had earned the whole right, because they paid 
a price ; that they did not bring the awe and rever- 
ence to their interpretations, and therefore they got 
nothing but jingle and tinkle and din. 

I didn't know the buttons and levers, but I had 
an idea how a certain slow movement should 
sound, if decently played. In two hours the in- 
strument gradually fitted itself to this conception. 
It was ready in every detail ; only I was to blame 
for the failures. The excitement and exultation 
is difficult to tell, as I entered deeper and deeper 
into the genius of the machine. It answered, not 
in tempo and volume alone, but in the pedal relax- 
ations and throbs of force. I thought of the young 
musicians who had laboured half their lives to 
bring to concert pitch the Waldstein or the Em- 

[266] 



MORE ABOUT ORDER 



peror, and that I had now merely to punctuate 
and read forth with love and understanding. . . . 

A word further on the subject of disposing of 
one hundred thousand motor cars in a year. You 
will say there was a market for them. That is 
not true. There is not a natural market for one- 
fourth of the manufactured objects in the world. 
A market was created for these motor-cars by meth- 
ods more original and gripping than ever went into 
the making of the motor or the assembly of its 
parts. The herd-instinct of men was played upon. 
In this particular case I do not know what it 
cost to sell one hundred thousand cars; in any 
event it was likely less in proportion to the cost of 
the product than is usually spent in disposing of 
manufactured duplicates, because the methods 
were unique. . . . Foot and mouth and heart, 
America is diseased with this disposal end. More 
and more energy is taken from production and 
turned into packing and selling. 

Manufactured duplicates destroy workmen, in- 
cite envy and covetousness, break down ideals of 
beauty, promote junk-heaps, enforce high prices 
through the cost of disposal, and destroy the ap- 
preciation and acceptance of the few fine things. 
These very statements are unprintable in news- 
papers and periodicals, because they touch the 
source of revenue for such productions, which is 
advertising. 

You will say that people want these things, or 

[267] 



CHILD AND COUNTRY 



they would not buy. A people that gets what it 
wants is a stagnant people. We are stuffed and 
sated with inferior objects. The whole art of life 
is identified with our appreciations, not with our 
possessions. We look about our houses and find 
that which we bought last month unapproved by 
the current style. If we obey the herd-instinct 
(and there is an intensity of stimulation on every 
hand for us to obey) we must gather in the new, 
the cheap, the tawdry, obeying the tradesmen's 
promptings, not our true appreciations — in cloth- 
ing, house-building and furnishing — following the 
heavy foot-prints of the advertising demon, a 
restless matter-mad race. 

We have lost the gods within; we have for- 
gotten the real producers, the real workmen; our 
houses are dens of the conglomerate, and God 
knows that implicates the status of our minds. 
William Morris is happily spared from witnessing 
the atrocities which trade has committed in his 
name, and the excellent beginning of taste and 
authority over matter inculcated by the spiritual 
integrity of Ruskin is yet far from becoming an 
incentive of the many. 

There are men who would die to make others 
see the wonderful character-building of productive 
labour. Until the work is found for the man, or 
man rises to find his own; until the great impetus 
in our national life is toward the end of develop- 
ing the intrinsic values of each child, and fitting 

[268] 



MORE ABOUT ORDER 



the task to it; so long as trade masters the many, 
and the minds of the majority are attracted to- 
ward the simple theorem of making cheap and 
forcing sales, or buying cheap and selling dear; 
so long as the child is competitively educated in 
great classes, and the pride of life is in possession 
of material things, instead of the eternal things — 
just so long will we have war and governmental 
stupidity, and all shames and misery for our por- 
tion. 



[269] 



24 
THE FRESH EYE 



LIVING in rows, conducting our move- 
ments and our apparel as nearly as possi- 
ble in accordance with the hitch of the 
moment, singing the songs our neigh- 
bours sing- — this is Order, but gregarian order. 
It is thus that we lose or postpone the achievement 
of the fresh eye, the sensitiveness to feel ourselves 
and the truth. We accept that which we are told 
as true and beautiful; we accept that which is 
accepted. In reality, each man's sense of beauty is 
a different treasure. He must have the spirit of 
pioneers to come into his own. 

A few years ago I passed for a square or two 
along the main avenue of a large city — a sunny 
afternoon in early winter, as I remember, and the 
hour of promenade. Young women and girls 
were wearing reds of the most hideous shades — 
the reds of blood and lust and decadence. 
"Those are the Balkan reds," I was told. 
A bit of poison has lingered from that shaft. 

[270] 



THE FRESH EYE 



I saw something about America that I have been 
unable to forget. The women and girls didn't 
know what they were doing. They had accepted 
Trade's offering of the season blindly. Trade had 
exploited the reds, because the word Balkans was 
in the air that Fall, on account of an extra vicious 
efflorescence of the fighting disease. American 
mothers had allowed their children to ape barbari- 
ties of colour which are adjusted exactly to those 
sinking and horror-bound peoples — bloody as the 
Balkans — because Trade had brought them in. 

These reds meant that the American multitude 
was unaware that certain colours are bad as hell. 
Trade will always lead a people astray. The eye 
that wants something from you, cannot lead you 
into beauty, does not know beauty. . . . More- 
over, we are led downward in taste by such short 
steps that often we forget where we have landed. 
. . . I was sitting in a street-car just recently, 
near the rear door where the conductor stood. I 
had admired his quiet handling of many small 
affairs, and the courtesy with which he managed 
his part. When I saw the mild virtue and decency 
of his face and head and ears, I wondered afresh 
that he should be there. 

He did the same thing each day, like a child 
compelled to remain at a certain small table to 
turn over again and again a limited and unvarying 
set of objects. There were but a few people in the 
car. I turned forward to the shoulders of the 

[271] 



CHILD AND COUNTRY 



motorman ; and from his figure my mind wandered 
to the myriads of men like him, somehow opening 
and shutting valves upon the juice and upon the 
passing force of steam — through tunnels and tres- 
tles at this moment — driving trains and cars and 
ships around the world. 

It was all a learning of Order, an integration 
of Order; and yet this motorman was held in rigid 
bands of steel, making the same unswerving pas- 
sage up and down the same streets, possibly a score 
of times each day — his lessons of Order having 
long since lost their meaning; his faculties nar- 
rowing as fingers tighten, lest Order break into 
chaos again. And I wondered what a true teacher 
might have done for this motorman as a child, to 
make the best and most of his forces. The aver- 
age child can be made into an extraordinary man. 
In some day, not too far, it will be the first busi- 
ness of the Fatherland to open the roads of produc- 
tion to those who are ready. 

Now I was back with the conductor; found my- 
self attentively regarding his trousers. 

They were of heavy wool and blue, doubtless 
as clean as the usual every-day woollen wear of 
men. . . . Here is a peculiar thing : If we wear 
white clothing for a day or two, an unmistakable 
soil attaches, so that change is enforced. And yet, 
since there is no cry of Scandal across the more 
civilised zones of earth, the many wear the same 
woollen outer clothing winter and summer for 

[272] 



THE FRESH EYE 



months at a stretch. One must accept this con- 
clusion: It is not that we object to dirt, but that 
we do not want the dirt obvious. The garment 
that holds dirt may be worn until its threads break 
down, but the garment that shows dirt must be 
washed. 

. . . They were heavy wool and blue. It was 
not the fabric alone, but the cut that held my eye. 
They were shaped somehow like a wide W that a 
child might bend with stiff wire, a letter made to 
stand alone. I suppose some firm makes them in 
great quantities for motormen and conductors. 
Had we not been led by easy grades to the accept- 
ance, these things would have cried out for our 
eyes. Nowhere in the Orient or the Islands, is the 
male form made so monstrous. Had some one 
drawn them for us, in a place where we are accus- 
tomed to look for caricature; had we seen them 
in comic opera, or upon the legs of a Pacific 
Islander; or had we come from another planet, 
there would have been no mistake as to the de- 
bauchery of taste they represented. Over all, was 
a sadness that this good man should be shamed so. 

And when one thinks of what women have done 
in obedience to the tradesman's instincts in late 
years ; narrowing their waists one season, widening 
their hips or accentuating the bust another, loosen- 
ing the abdomen as from a tightened stem the 
next — these are the real obscenities which we per- 
form in the shelter of the herd. Exposure is frank 

[ 273 ] 



CHILD AND COUNTRY 



and clean-hearted compared to these manifesta- 
tions of human beings ; so that one with the begin- 
nings of fresher vision cries out, "If I do not know, 
if I have not taste and cannot see truly, at least 
let me do as others do not." . . . And again the 
heaviness of it all lies in the bringing up of chil- 
dren not to revolt. 

I talked of these matters to the Chapel group. 
Once I had seen a tall man, who was going away, 
look down into the eyes of a little boy he loved, 
saying: "Never do anything in secret that you 
wouldn't do before your best friend. The fact is, 
the only way you can ever be alone is to be beneath 
yourself." I remembered that as something very 
wise and warm. 

It came to me, as I talked, that what we love 
best in children is their freshness of eye. We re- 
peat their sayings with pleasure because they see 
things without the world-training; they see ob- 
jects in many cases as they are. It was but a step 
then to the fact that the artist or worker who 
brings up anything worthy, has done just this — 
reproduced the thing more nearly as it is, because 
of a natural freshness of vision, or because he has 
won back to himself through years of labour, the 
absolute need of relying upon what his own senses 
and his own spirit bring him. It was this reliance 
that I was endeavouring to inculcate in every day's 

work in the Chapel. 

[274] 



THE FRESH EYE 

Again and again the children have made me 
see the dissolving of character which comes from 
all forms of acting, even the primary defect of the 
novel as a vehicle, and the inevitable breaking 
down in good time of every artificial form of ex- 
pression. It is true now, that an important mes- 
sage can be carried to the many more effectively 
in a play or a novel than through the straight 
white expression of its truth. This is so because 
the many have been pandered to so long by arti- 
ficial settings and colourings, that the pure spirit 
of truth — white because it contains all colour — 
is not dominant and flaring enough for the wearied 
and plethoric eye. 

We say that character-drawing in fiction, for 
instance, is an art. A writer holds a certain pic- 
ture of a man or woman in his brain, as the story 
containing this character develops. In drawing a 
low character, the mind must be altered and de- 
formed for its expression. In a book of fiction 
of a dozen different characters, the productive 
energy passes through a dozen different matrices 
before finding expression. These forms lie in the 
mind, during the progress of the novel; and since 
our own characters are formed of the straight ex- 
pression of the thought as it appears in the brain, 
one does not need to impress the conclusion that 
we are being false to ourselves in the part of fic- 
tionists, no matter how consummate we become as 

artists. 

[275] 



CHILD AND COUNTRY 



It is an old story how the daughter of Dickens 
sat forgotten in his study, while he was at work 
upon some atrocious character of the under Lon- 
don world, possibly Quilp; how the great cari- 
caturist left his desk for a mirror, and standing 
there went through the most extraordinary grim- 
aces and contortions, fixing the character firmly 
in his mind for a more perfect expression in words. 

In this same regard, one of the most interesting 
and sorrowful of all observations is the character 
disintegration of those who take up the work of 
acting as a career. Yet fiction writing is but a 
subtler form of acting in words. The value of our 
books is in part the concision of character por- 
trayal — the facility with which we are able to lose 
ourselves and be some one else. Often in earlier 
years, I have known delight when some one said, 
"You must be that person when you are writing 
about him." I would answer : "He comes clearer 
and clearer through a book and presently begins 
to do himself. After that one goes over the early 
part of the book during which the character is 
being learned, and corrects him in the light of the 
more nearly finished conception." 

It was a betrayal of glibness, of lightly- founded 
character, a shiftiness which must pass. 

The utterance of truth is not aided by passing 
through a brain that is cut like a hockey rink 
from the passage of many characters. The expres- 
sion of truth preserves its great vitality by passing 

[276] 



THE FRESH EYE 

in as near a straight line as possible from the source 
through the instrument. The instrument is al- 
ways inferior. It is always somehow out of true, 
because it is human and temporal. It is not en- 
hanced by human artifice, by actings, nor by iden- 
tification with fictions. The law of all life tells 
us, and we do not need to be told if we stop to 
realise, that the spirit of man is integrated by 
truth in expression, that the more nearly the truth 
we speak, the more nearly we bring the human and 
temporal to a par with the immortal within us. 
Bringing the mind to interpret the immortal is 
the true life, the true education, the fruits of which 
are the love of men and serenity and growth. I 
once heard it said that Carlyle, Whitman, Tho- 
reau, Emerson and such men could not be artists 
in the fiction sense — that their efforts were pa- 
thetic, when they tried to enflesh their literary 
efforts in story form. 

This is true. Yet we do not count our greatest 
novelists and actors above them in the fine per- 
spective of the years, for they were interpreters 
of the human spirit. They interpreted more and 
more, as the years mounted upon them, the human 
spirit as it played through their own minds, which 
steadily conformed more nearly to truth. The 
point of the whole matter is, that in learning to 
interpret the human spirit more and more directly, 
by actions in the world or written words apart, 
the mind draws increasingly deep from a source 

[277] 



CHILD AND COUNTRY 



that is inexhaustible, and its expression finally be- 
comes so rich and direct and potent that acting and 
fictioning of any form is impossible. 

Again, it is the straight expression of things as 
they find them, that charms us in the words of 
children and masters. The true education is to 
encourage such expression, to keep the passage be- 
tween the mind and its centre of origins wide 
open for the forth-sending of the inimitable and 
the actual. 

The young minds here are trained to realise 
that the biddings of their inner life are more inter- 
esting and reliable than any processes merely men- 
tal can possibly be. Unless their teacher fails, 
they will become more and more the expressionists 
of themselves. No matter what form their work 
takes in the world, the ideal is held that the dimen- 
sion of the human spirit will be upon their work, 
and this alone makes the task of any man or 
woman singular and precious and of the elect. 

I hear again, "But you will make them soli- 
taries." . . . The solitary way is first — all the 
great companions have taken that way at first. 
Solitude — that is the atmosphere for the concep- 
tion of every heroism. The aspirations of the 
solitary turn to God. Having heard the voice of 
God — then comes the turning back to men. . . . 
To be powerful in two worlds — that is the ideal. 
There is a time for nestlings — and a time for 

great migratory flights. 

[278] 



25 

THECHOICEOFTHEMANY 



A TEACHER said upon hearing the title 
of this book, that she supposed it had 
to do with the child in relation to the 
state or nation — a patriotic meaning. I 
was wrong in getting a sting from this, for one 
should not be ambiguous. The sting came because 
of a peculiar distaste for national integrations and 
boundaries of any kind between men. The new 
civilisation which the world is preparing for, and 
which the war seems divinely ordained to hasten 
to us, will have little to do with tightly bound 
and self-contained peoples. In fact, such nations 
furnish in themselves an explosive force for dis- 
ruption. Little more than material vision is now 
required to perceive most of the nations of lower 
Europe gathered like crones about a fire hugging 
the heat to their knees, their spines touched with 
death. 

The work in the Chapel is very far from par- 
tisanship, nationalism and the like. It has been 

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CHILD AND COUNTRY 



a true joy to watch the young minds grasp the 
larger conception. It is as if they were prepared 
for it — as if they had been waiting. Encouraged 
to look to their own origins for opinion and under- 
standing; taught that what they find there is the 
right opinion and conception for them, they find 
it mainly out of accord with things as they are. 
They express the thing as they see it, and in this 
way build forms of thought for the actions of the 
future to pass through. 

This is sheer realism. We have always called 
those who walked before us, the mystics, because 
the paths they tread are dim to our eyes and their 
distance far ahead. That which is the mystic 
pathway of one generation is the open highway 
of the next. No man ever felt the awakening of 
his spirit and bowed to its manifestation, who 
was not a mystic to the many or few about him, 
and always the children of his fellows come to 
understand him better than their fathers. 

I say to them here: I do not expect common 
things from you. I expect significant things. I 
would have you become creatively significant as 
mothers and as writers and as men. The new 
civilisation awaits you — new thought, the new 
life, superb opportunities for ushering in an heroic 
age. 

You are to attempt the impossible. Nothing 
of the temporal must hold you long or master 
you. Immortality is not something to be won ; it 

[280] 



THE CHOICE OF THE MANY 

is here and now in the priceless present hour, this 
moving point that ever divides the past from the 
future. Practice daily to get out of the three- 
score-and-ten delusion, into the eternal scope of 
things, wherein the little troubles and the evils 
which so easily and continually beset, are put 
away. There is no order in the temporal, no seren- 
ity, no universality. You who are young can turn 
quickly. That which you suffer you have earned. 
If you take your suffering apart and search it, 
you will find the hidden beauty of it and the les- 
son. If you learn the lesson, you will not have 
to suffer this way again. Every day there is a 
lesson, every hour. The more you pass, the faster 
they come. One may live a 'life of growth in a 
year. That which is stagnant is dying ; that which 
is static is dead. 

There is no art in the temporal. You are not 
true workmen as slaves of the time. Three-score- 
and-ten — that is but an evening camp in a vast 
continental journey. Relate your seeming misfor- 
tunes not to the hour, but to the greater distances, 
and the pangs of them are instantly gone. Art — 
those who talk art in the temporal — have not be- 
gun to work. If they only would look back at 
those masters whose work they follow, whose lives 
they treasure, they would find that they revere 
men who lived beyond mere manifestations in a 
name, and lifted themselves out of the illusion of 
one life being all. 

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CHILD AND COUNTRY 



There is no philosophy in the temporal. That 
which we call reason and science changes like the 
coats and ties of men. Material science talks loud, 
its eyes empty, clutching at one restless comet and 
missing the universe. That thing known as psy- 
chology taught to-day in colleges will become even 
for your generation a curio, sacred only for the 
preservation of humour. No purpose that confines 
itself to matter can become a constructive effect, 
for matter breaks down, is continually changed 
into new forms. 

Electric bulbs wear out and are changed, but 
the current does not change. The current lights 
them one after another of different sizes, as you 
put them on. The bulb is an instrument like the 
brain. You turn on the power, and there is light. 
You would not rely upon the passing machine, 
when you know the secret of its force. Matter is 
driven, flesh is driven, all that answers to the 
pull of the ground is driven and changed and 
broken down and reunited in ever refining forms. 
That in your heart — that sleeping one — is dy- 
namic with all that you have been. Your brain 
knows only the one. Do not forget your native 
force, as an immortal being. You may be workers 
in magic. 

Do not become bewildered by what the world 
calls good. The world does not know. Follow 
the world and in that hour when you have obeyed 
its dictates and learned its wants — its taste will 

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THE CHOICE OF THE MANY 

change and leave you nothing. That which the 
many have chosen is of the many. The voice of the 
many is not the voice of God — it is the voice of 
the temporal and its destiny is swift mutation. 

Nothing greater than the many can come from 
the ballot of the many; that is so well learned that 
its few and startling exceptions but help us to see 
the bleakness of the blind choice of the crowd, 
which conducts us sometimes to war and invariably 
to commonness. The few great men who have 
touched the seats of the mighty in this or any 
country — have walked with God alone against the 
crowd — until they were given the power to master 
their way into authority. 

The choice of the many in a political leader is 
not different from its choice of a book or a flower 
or a fabric. A low vibration is demanded. 



[ 283 ] 



26 

THE ROSE CHAPTER 



I REMEMBER the February day in Chapel 
when the winter first became irksome. It 
had settled down in mid-November and 
been steady and old-fashioned. The lit- 
tle girl opened the matter. Winter had be- 
come a tiresome lid upon her beloved Nature — a 
white lid that had been on quite long enough. 
She had not let us forget the open weather much, 
for her talk and her essays had to do with growing 
days invariably. . . . The Abbot began to talk 
of Spring. Spring had also appeared in his pa- 
per, though outside there was two feet of steely 
frost in the ground. . . . Memories of other 
Springs began to consume us that day. We 
talked of buds and bugs and woodland places—? 
of the gardens we would make presently. 

"When roses began to come out for me the first 
time," said the old man, "I sort of lost interest in 
the many flowers. I saw a rose-garden and little 
beside — vines, of course. I know men who fall 

[284] 



THE ROSE CHAPTER 



like this into the iris, the dahlia, the gladiolus 
and the peony. There are folks who will have 
salvia and petunias, and I know a man who has 
set out poppies in his front yard with unvarying 
resolution — oh, for many years. He knows just 
how to set them out, and abandonment is over for 
that place with the first hard frost in the Fall. 
There is one good thing about poppies. They do 
not lie to you. They are frankly bad — the single 
ones, dry and thin with their savage burning, their 
breath from some deep-concealed place of decay. 
The double poppies are more dreadful — born of 
evil thoughts, blackness blent with their reds. 
Petunias try to apear innocent, but the eye that re- 
gards them as the conclusion in decorative effect, 
has very far to come. Every man has the flower 
that fits him, and very often it is the badge of his 
place in human society. 

"The morning-glory is sweeter natured and 
somewhat finer in colour than the petunia, but 
very greedy still. It does not appreciate good 
care. Plant it in rose soil and it will pour itself 
out in lush madness that forgets to bloom — like a 
servant that one spoils by treating as a human. 
Each flower tells its story as does a human face. 
One needs only to see deeply enough. The expres- 
sion of inner fineness makes for beauty." 

Which remarks were accepted without com- 
ment. 

"Again," the old man added, "some of the ac- 

[285] 



CHILD AND COUNTRY 



cepted things are not so far along in beauty. Tu- 
lips are supposed to be such rejoicers. I can't see 
it. They are little circles, a bit unpleasant and 
conceited. If one were to explain on paper what 
a flower is like, to a man who had never seen 
anything but trees, he would draw a tulip. They 
are unevolved. There is raw green in the tulip 
yellows; the reds are like a fresh wound, and the 
whites are either leaden or clayey. . . . Violets 
are almost spiritual in their enticements. They 
have colour, texture, form, habit, and an exhala- 
tion that is like a love-potion — earthy things that 
ask so little, do so well apart and low among the 
shadows. They have come far like the bees and 
the martins. Lilacs are old in soul, too, and their 
fragrance is loved untellably by many mystics, 
though the green of their foliage is questionable. 
Nothing that is old within is complacent. Com- 
placency goes with little orbits in men and all 
creatures." 

"Cats are complacent," said the Abbot. 

"Nasturtiums are really wonderful the more one 
lives with them," the voice of the Chapel went on. 
"They are not so old, but very pure. Their odour, 
in delicacy and earth-purity, is something that one 
cannot express his gratitude for — like the mignon- 
ette. Their colouring and form warms us unto 
dearer feelings. They seem fairer and brighter 
each year — not among the great things yet, but so 
tenderly and purely on the way. Then I may 

[286] 



THE ROSE CHAPTER 



betray a weakness of my own — and I am glad to— 
but I love the honeysuckle vine. Its green is 
good, its service eager, the white of its young blos- 
some very pure and magically made. The yellow 
of its maturer flowers is faintly touched with a 
durable and winning brown like the Hillingdon 
rose, and its fragrance to me though very sweet 
has never cloyed through long association. Yet 
clover scent and many of the lilies and hyacinths 
and plants that flower in winter from tubers, can 
only be endured in my case from a distance." 

"Soon he will get to his roses," said the little 
girl. 

"Yes, I am just to that now. It has been an 
object of curiosity to me that people raise so 
many just roses. Here is a world by itself. There 
is a rose for every station in society. There are 
roses for beast and saint; roses for passion and 
renunciation; roses for temple and sanctuary, and 
roses to wear for one going down into Egypt. 
There are roses that grow as readily as morning- 
glories, and roses that are delicate as children of 
the Holy Spirit, requiring the love of the human 
heart to thrive upon, before sunlight and water. 
There is a rose for Laura, a rose for Beatrice, a 
rose for Francesca. . . . Do you know that one 
of the saddest things in the world, is that we have 
to hark back so far for the great romances ? Here 
am I recalling the names of three women of long 
ago whose kisses made immortals of their mates, as 

[287] 



CHILD AND COUNTRY 

thousands of other writers have done who seek to 
gather a background out of the past against which 
to measure their romances. 

"You will say that the romances of to-day are 
not told; that a man and woman of to-day keep 
the romance apart of their life from the world — 
of all things most sacred. You may discuss this 
point with eloquence and at length, but you are 
not on solid ground. A great romance cannot be 
veiled from the world, because of all properties 
that the world waits for, this is the most crying 
need. Great lovers must be first of all great men 
and women; and lofty love invariably finds ex- 
pression, since greatness, both acknowledged and 
intrinsic, comes to be through expression. A great 
romance will out — through a child or a book or 
some mighty heroism. Its existence changes all 
things in its enviroment. One looks about the 
place of it and finds the reporters there. The 
highest deeds and utterances and works have come 
to man through the love of woman; their origins 
can be traced to a woman's house, to a woman's 
arms. A woman is the mother of a man's chil- 
dren, but the father of his actions in the world. 
He is but the instrument of bearing; it is her 
energy that quickens his conceiving. . . . 

"Roses — how strangely they have had their part 
in the loves of men and women. Do you think 
that our Clovelly roses have come to be of them- 
selves^ Do you think that the actual hurt of 

[288] 



THE ROSE CHAPTER 



their beauty — the restless, nameless quest that 
comes spurring to our hearts from their silent lean- 
ing over the rim of a vase — is nothing more than 
a product of soil and sun? Has their great giving 
to human romances been dead as moonlight? 
Have roses taken nothing in return ? . . . I would 
not insist before the world that the form and fra- 
grance and texture of the rose has come to be from 
the magnetisms of lovers, but we of the Chapel 
may think as we will. That liberty is our first 
law. We may believe, if we like, that the swans 
of Bruges have taken something in return for their 
mystic influence upon the Belgian lovers at even- 
ing — something that makes a flock of flying swans 
one of the most thrilling spectacles in Nature. 

"... I was speaking of how curious it is that 
so many people who have reached roses — have 
ended their quest on the borders, at least that they 
linger so long. They raise red roses; they bring 
forth spicy June roses. In truth, the quest never 
ends. We do not stop at the Clovelly, which has 
so strangely gladdened our past summer. We pass 
from the red to the white to the pink roses — 
and then enter the garden of yellow roses, the 
search ever more passionate — until we begin to 
discover that which our hearts are searching for — 
not upon any plant but in ideal. 

"The instant that we conceive the picture, earth 
and sun have set about producing the flower — as 
action invariably follows to fill the matrix of the 

[289] 



CHILD AND COUNTRY 



thought. At least we think so — as the universe is 
evolving to fulfil at last the full thought of 
God. . . . 

"The quest never ends. From one plant to an- 
other the orchid-lover goes, until he hears at last 
of the queen of all orchids, named of the Holy 
Spirit, which has the image of a white dove set in 
a corolla as chaste as the morning star. An old 
Spanish priest of saintly piety tells him, and he 
sets out for the farthest continent to search. It 
was his listening, his search for the lesser beauty 
that brought him to the news of the higher. It is 
always so. We find our greater task in the per- 
formance of the lesser ones. . . . But roses — so 
many by-paths, because roses are the last and high- 
est words in flowers, and the story they tell is so 
significant with meanings vital to ourselves and 
all Nature. 

"First I want to divulge a theory of colour, be- 
ginning with the greens which are at the bottom. 
There are good greens — the green of young elms 
and birches and beeches. Green may be evil too, 
as the lower shades of yellow may be — and certain 
blends of green and yellow are baleful. The 
greens are first to appear. They are Nature's near- 
est emerging — the water-colours — the green of the 
water-courses and the lowlands. Nature brings 
forth first the green and then the sun does his part. 
Between the rose-gold and the green of a lichen, 
there seems to be something like ninety degrees 

[290] 



THE ROSE CHAPTER 



of evolution — the full quarter of the circle that 
is similarly expressed between the prone spine of 
the serpent and the erect spine of man. 

"Reds are complementary to the greens and 
appear next, refining more or less in accord with 
the refinement of the texture upon which they are 
laid; a third refinement taking place, too, that of 
form. These improvements of value are not 
exactly concurrent. There are roses, for instance, 
to represent all stages — roses that are specialising 
in their present growth, one might say, in form 
or colour or texture; but in the longer line of 
growth, the refinement is general. We look from 
our window at the Other Shore and a similar anal- 
ogy is there. From this distance it seems but one 
grand sweep to the point of the breakers, but 
when we walk along the beach, we are often lost 
to the main curve in little indentations, which cor- 
respond to the minor specialisations of evolving 
things. It is the same in man's case. We first 
build a body, then a mind, then a soul — and 
growth in the dimension of soul unifies and beauti- 
fies the entire fabric. All Nature reveals to those 
who see — that the plan is one. . . . 

"The first roses were doubtless of a watery red. 
Their colour evolved according to association of 
the particular plants, some into the deeper reds, 
others paling to the white. It was the latter that 
fell into the path of truer progress. Reaching 
white, with a greatly refined texture, the sun began 

[291] 



CHILD AND COUNTRY 



to paint a new beauty upon them — not the pink 
that is a diluted red, but the colouring of sunlight 
upon the lustre of a pearl. The first reds were 
built upon the greens ; this new pink was laid upon 
a white base. 

"The story is the same through all evolving 
things. Growth is a spiral. We return to the 
same point but upon a higher level. Our ascent 
is steadily upward — always over hills and valleys, 
so to speak, but our valleys always higher above 
the level of the sea. So that the white is a transi- 
tion — an erasure of the old to prepare for the 
finer colouring. 

"And now comes the blend of the maiden pink 
and the sunlight gold. The greens and the reds 
are gone entirely. Mother Earth brings up the 
rose with its virgin purity of tint, and the sun 
plays its gold upon it. There are pink and yellow 
roses to show all the processes of this particular 
scope of progress ; some still too much pink, other 
roses have fallen by the way into lemon and ochre 
and sienna; there are roses that have reverted to 
the reds again; roses that have been caught in a 
sort of fleshly lust and have piled on petals upon 
petals as the Holland maidens pile on petticoats, 
losing themselves to form and texture and colour, 
for the gross illusion of size. We see whole races 
of men lost in the same illusion. . . . 

"There are roses that have accomplished all but 
perfection, save for a few spots of red on the outer 

[292] 



THE ROSE CHAPTER 



petals — like the persistent adhering taint of an- 
cient sins. . . . But you have seen the Clovellys 
— they are the best we have found. They have 
made us deeper and wiser for their beauty. Like 
some saintly lives— they seem to have come all 
but the last of the ninety degrees between the 
green of the level water-courses and the flashing 
gold of the meridian sun. . . . The Mother has 
borne them, and in due time (as men must do, or 
revert to the ground again) they have turned to 
the light of the Father. . . . The fragrance of 
these golden teas is the sublimate of all Nature. 
Man, in the same way, is inclusive of all beneath. 
He contains earth, air, water, fire and all their 
products. In the tea-rose is embodied all the 
forces of plant-nature, since they are the highest 
manifestation. . . . The June roses have lost the 
way in their own spice ; so many flowers are sunk 
in the stupors from their own heavy sweetness. 
The mignonette has sacrificed all for perfume, 
and the Old Mother has given her something not 
elsewhere to be found; the nasturtium has pro- 
gressed so purely as to have touched the cork of 
the inner vial, but the golden teas have brought 
the fragrance itself to our nostrils. Those who 
are ready can sense the whole story. It is the 
fragrance of the Old Mother's being. You can 
sense it without the rose, on the wings of a South 
Wind that crosses water or meadows after a rain." 



[293] 



27 

LETTERS 



OUTSIDE, as I have said, it was cracking 
cold. We talked thirstily by the big 
fire, discussed the perfect yellows in 
Nature — symbols of purest aspiration — 
and the honest browns that come to the sunlight- 
gold from service and wear — the yellow-brown 
of clustered honey bees, of the Sannysin robe, 
of the purple martin's breast. We were thirst- 
ing for Spring before the fire. The heart of 
man swells and buds like a tree. He waits for 
Spring like all living things. The first months of 
winter are full of zest and joy, but the last be- 
comes intolerable. The little girl had not let us 
forget at all, and so we were yearning a full month 
too soon. 

"I know a bit of woods," said the Abbot. "It 
is only two miles away. A creek runs through it, 
and there are hills all 'round — lots of hickory 
and elm and beech. There's one beech woods off 
by itself. Maples and chestnuts are there, too, 

[294] 



LETTERS 

and many little cedars. There is a log house in 
the centre, and right near it a Spring " 

He was talking like an old saint would talk of 
the Promised Land. 

"You are breaking our hearts," I said. 

"The hills are dry, so you can go early," he 
went on. "The cattle have been there in season, 
as long as I can remember, so there are little open 
meadows like lawns. The creek is never dry, and 
the Spring near the log house never runs dry. I 
could go there now " 

"So could I," said the little girl. 

They almost trapped me. I stirred in the chair, 
and remembered there was but an hour or two of 
daylight left in the afternoon. . . . Besides there 
was a desk covered with letters. . . . People ask 
problems of their own, having fancied perhaps 
that they met a parallel somewhere in the writings 
from this Study. I used to answer these perfunc- 
torily, never descending to a form but accepting 
it as a part of the labour of the work. I shudder 
now at the obtuseness of that. I have met people 
who said, "I have written you several letters, but 
never mailed them." 

"Why?" I would ask. 

Answers to this question summed into the reason 
that they found themselves saying such personal 
things that they were afraid I would smile or be 
bored. . . . Letters are regarded as a shining 

[295] 



CHILD AND COUNTRY 



profit now, a fine part of the real fruits. The 
teaching-relation with young minds has shown me 
the wonderful values of direct contact. The class 
of letters that supplies sources of human value are 
from men and women who are too fine ever to lose 
the sense of proportion. The letters that are hard- 
est to answer, and which remain the longest unan- 
swered, are from people who have merely intel- 
lectual views ; those who are holding things in their 
minds with such force that their real message is 
obstructed. I dislike aggressive mentality ; it may 
be my weakness, but much-educated persons dis- 
order this atmosphere. They want things; they 
want to discuss. A man is not free to give nor to 
receive when his hand or brain is occupied with 
holding. I have had the choicest relations with 
honest criticism, the criticism that is constructive 
because the spirit of it is not criticism. Letters, 
however, critical or otherwise, that are heady, do 
not bring the beauty that we seem to need, nor do 
they draw the answers they were designed for. 
The pure human impulse is unmistakable. 

There are letters from people who want things. 
Some people want things so terribly, that the crush 
of it is upon their pages. I do not mean auto- 
graphs. Those who have a penchant for such 
matters have learned to make reply very easy ; nor 
do I mean those who have habits. There seems to 
be a class of men and women who want to "do" 
literature for money, and who ask such questions 

1296] 



LETTERS 

as, "What is the best way to approach a pub- 
lisher?" "What should a writer expect to make 
from his first novel ?" "Do you sell outright or 
on royalty, and how much should one ask on a 
first book, if the arrangement is made this or that 
way?" 

I think of such as the eighty-thousand-the-year 
folk. The detail of producing the novel is second 
to the marketing. The world is so full of meaning 
to the effect that fine work is not produced this 
way; and yet, again and again, this class of writers 
have gotten what they want. Much money has 
been made out of books by those who wrote for 
that. People, in fact, who have failed at many 
things, have settled down in mid-life and written 
books that brought much money. 

But such are only incidents. They are not of 
consequence compared to the driving impulse 
which one man or woman in a hundred follows, 
to write to one who has said something that quick- 
ens the heart. . . . There was a letter on the desk 
that day from a young woman in one of the big 
finishing schools. The message of it was that she 
was unbearably restless, that her room-mate was 
restless. They were either out of all truth and 
reason, or else the school was, and their life at 
home as well. They had been brought up to take 
their place in that shattered world called Society 
— winter for accomplishments, summers for moun- 
tain and shore. They were very miserable and 

[297] 



CHILD AND COUNTRY 



they seemed to sense the existence of a different 
world. . . . Was there such a world? Was there 
work for women to do? Was it all an un-mat- 
tered ideal that such a world existed? This letter 
achieved an absolute free-hearted sincerity in the 
final page or two — that most winning quality of 
the younger generation. 

. . . Then, many people are whole-heartedly 
in love around the world. Letters often bring in 
this reality, many calling for a wisdom that is not 
of our dispensation. . . .It was from personal 
letters first of all that I learned of the powerful 
corrective force, which is being established against 
American materialism along the Western coast. 
There is to-day an increasingly finer surface for 
the spiritual things of art and life, the farther 
westward one travels across the States. It is a 
conviction here that the vital magic of America's 
ideal, promulgated in the small eastern colonies, 
will be saved, if at all, by the final stand of its 
defenders with their backs to the Pacific. 

All our East has suffered from the decadent 
touch of Europe. Matter is becoming dense and 
unescapable in the East. Chicago, a centre of 
tremendous vitalities of truth, is making a splen- 
did fight against the entrenchments of the temporal 
mania; but in the larger sense, all that is living 
spirit is being driven westward before gross Matter 
— westward as light tends, as the progress of civil- 
isation and extinction tends. 

[298] 



LETTERS 



The gleam is in the West, but it faces the East. 
It is rising. In California, if anywhere in the 
world, the next Alexandria is to be builded. Many 
strong men are holding to this hope, with steady 
and splendid idealisation. 

But there is black activity there, too. Always 
where the white becomes lustrous the black deep- 
ens. On the desk before me on that same winter 
day, was a communication from San Francisco — 
the last to me of several documents from a newly- 
formed society for applying psychology. The doc- 
uments were very carefully done, beautifully 
typed and composed. They reckoned with the 
new dimension which is in the world, which is 
above flesh and above brain; which is, in fact, 
the unifying force of the brain faculties, called 
here Intuition. The founders of this society 
reckoned, too, with the fact that psychology as it 
has been taught from a material basis in schools 
and colleges is a blight. One can't, as a purely 
physical being, relate himself to mental processes; 
nor can one approach the super-mental area by 
the force of mentality alone. 

But I found the turning in these documents 
with alarm ; that the purpose divulged was to mas- 
ter matter for material ends. This is black busi- 
ness — known to be black before the old Alexan- 
dria, known to be black before the Christ came. 
They had asked for comment, even for criticism. 

[299] 



CHILD AND COUNTRY 



I recalled that psychology is the science of the soul, 
and wrote this letter: 

"I have received some of your early papers and 
plans, and thank you. I want to offer an opinion 
in good spirit. I find the powerful impulse run- 
ning through your effort, as expressed in the papers 
I have read — to play to commerce and the trade 
mind. This is developing fast enough without 
bringing inner powers to work in the midst of these 
low forces. They will work. They will master, 
but it seems to me that spiritual ruin will result. 
For these forces which you show in operation are 
the real vitalities of man, which used other than 
in the higher schemes of life — call in the bigger 
devils for man to cope with. When one begins 
to use the dimension of the inner life, before the 
lower phases of the self are mastered, he becomes 
a peril to himself and to others. I feel that I do 
not need to be explicit to psychologists. I want 
to be on record as strongly urging you to be sure 
that the animal is caged before you loose the angel. 
Also that I have a conviction that there are ten 
times too many tradesmen in the world now; and 
that office-efficiency is not the kind that America is 
in need of. I repeat that I know you are in the 
way of real work, and that's why I venture to show 
my point of view ; and please believe me energetic 
only toward the final good of the receptive sur- 
face you have set out to impress." 



[soo] 



28 

THE ABBOT DEPARTS 



ONE day in March, the Abbot said: 
"You know that woods I was telling 
you about?' 
"Yes." 
"Well, my father bought it the other day." 
. . . Something rolled over me, or within. This 
was a pervading ache that had to do with the 
previous summer. I had ridden several times to 
the Perfect Lane. It cut a man's farm in two 
from north to south and was natural; that is, the 
strip of trees had been left when the land was 
cleared, and they had reached a venerable age. 
Oak, hickory and beech — clean, vast, in-their- 
prime forest-men — with thorn and dogwood grow- 
ing between. It had been like a prayer to ride 
through that Lane. The cattle had made a path 
on the clay and the grass had grown in soft and 
blue-green in the shade. In sapling days, the 
great trees had woven their trunks on either side of 
a rail-fence that had stood for a half-century. It 

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CHILD AND COUNTRY 



was an approach to the farm-house that an artist 
would have named an estate after — or a province. 

Then came the day that I rode toward a smudge 
in the sky, and found men and boys at work burn- 
ing and cutting. The superb aisle was down. I 
turned the horse and rode back. I learned that in 
the fields on either side of the lane a strip of land, 
fifty or sixty feet wide, had been too much shaded 
so that the corn and oats had not prospered. Per- 
haps it was there that the cruelty of the narrow- 
templed Order made its deepest impression. God 
bless the fodder — but what a price to pay. They 
had burned the thorn and dogwood, felled the 
giants; they would plough under that sacred cat- 
tle-path. 

Then I thought of the denuded lands of North 
America; the billions of cubic feet of natural gas 
wasted; lakes of oil, provinces of pine and hard- 
wood vanished; the vast preserves of game de- 
stroyed to the wolf and the pig and the ostrich 
still left in man's breast. The story of the strug- 
gle for life on Mars came to me — how the only 
water that remains in that globe of quickened 
evolution is at the polar caps, and that the canals 
draw down from the meltings of the warm sea- 
son the entire supply for the midland zones. They 
have stopped wastage on Mars. 

It was these things that came to me at the mere 
mention of the transfer of the woodland property. 

[ 302 ] 



THE ABBOT DEPARTS 



If it were going to be cut, I was glad I hadn't seen 
it, and certainly I didn't want to enter now. 

"What's your father going to do with it?" I 
asked. 

"Use it for a pasture." 

"Isn't going to cut it — any of it?" 

"No." 

Always there had been something absolute about 
the Abbot's No and Yes. I took hope. 

"Is it thin enough to pasture?" 

"The main piece is. Better come and see." 

A pair of rubber boots in the corner of the 
Chapel caught my eye and the wan light of March 
outside. 

"There's everything there — a virgin beech wood 
— a few acres of second-growth stuff that has all 
the vines and trailers — then the stream and the 
big hollow where the cattle move up and down." 

"Did you have anything to do with keeping it 
unspoiled?" I asked. 

"My father didn't intend to cut anything right 
away. He might have thinned the pasture section 
a little. I asked him not to. When he saw the 
way I felt about it, he said he would never cut it." 

There was a healing in that never. . . . The 
Abbot was not the kind to ask his father for un- 
reasonable things. I had seen the two together, 
and had studied their relation with some pleasure. 
In the main, the father had merely to understand, 
to be at one with the boy. ... It happened that 

[303] 



CHILD AND COUNTRY 



we were alone in the Chapel at that time. I 
reached for the rubber-boots. 

'Til ride as far as town and put the horse up," 
said I. "Meet me at the far-end in a half-hour 
and we'll start the hike from there." 

He was off at once, dullness was still in the 
air, the land grey, clouds yellowish-grey and 
watery. 

We slipped out behind the stores and out- 
houses to a field that had a stream running across 
— a stream and a hill and a band of oaks that 
still held fast to a few leaves on the lower limbs, 
where the winds could not get at them so freely. 
You can't expect to get anything out of an oak- 
tree without working for it. I have seen an oak- 
log softened to punk, the bark gone, having lain 
in a woodland shadow, doubtless for thirty or 
forty years, but still holding fast to its unmis- 
takable grain and formation, though you could rub 
it to powder between the fingers. For quite a 
little way, we followed the stream which was 
swollen with melting snows, and then straight 
toward the wooded horizon line, the afternoon 
hastening so that we marched with it, hot under 
our sweaters, presently getting the stride of fence 
and ditch. The sun appeared at times milk-like 
and ghostly in the south-west. . . . That was 
the first time I saw the Amphitheatre. 

We had reached the edge of the woodland and 
the height of land and looked over the wooded 

[304] 



THE ABBOT DEPARTS 



slope into a silent pasture-land, a stream winding 
through the centre. The grass had been cropped 
to the last of the Fall days, and in the recent 
thaws the stream had overrun the entire bottom, 
so that the lowland pasture was not only tonsured, 
but combed and washed. I looked up. A beech- 
tree was shivering on the slope beside me, holding 
fast to her leaves of paper white on wide and 
pendent branches; a smooth and beautiful trunk 
of bedford grey, with eyes like kine carved upon 
it. Then I saw that this was but one of a sister- 
hood — the mother-tree fallen. Across were oaks 
and hickories, and through the naked branches, 
a log cabin. 

An enumeration will not even suggest the pic- 
ture. Sheep and cattle had made it a grove of 
the earth-gods. We remembered the Spring by 
the cabin, and crossed to it. Skimming the leaves 
from the basin, we watched it fill with that easy 
purity of undisturbed Nature. . . . Now there 
was a fine blowing rain in our faces, and the smell 
of the woods itself in the moist air was a Pres- 
ence. The cabin had been built for many dec- 
ades — built of white oak, hewn, morticed and 
tenoned. The roof and floor was gone, but the 
walls needed only chinking. They were founded 
upon boulders. ... I saw in days to come a pair 
of windows opening to the north, and a big open 
fireplace on the east wall, a new floor and a new 

roof. ... It would be a temple. I saw young 

[305 ] 



CHILD AND COUNTRY 



men and children coming there in the long years 
ahead. . . . Across the open field beyond was a 
forest. 

"The big beeches are there," the Abbot said. 

"It can't be so perfect as this," I declared. 

"It is different. This is a grove — thinned for 
pasture land. Over there it is a forest of beech. 
To the west is a second growth of woods— every- 
thing small but thick. You can see and take 
things right in your hand " 

We did not go to the forest nor to the jungle 
that day, but moved about the rim of that delved 
pasture-land, watching the creek from different 
angles, studying the trees without their insignia. 
We knew the main timbers only — beech, oak, elm, 
maple and hickory and ash, blue beech and iron- 
wood and hawthorn. There were others that I 
did not know, and the Abbot seemed disturbed 
that he could not always help. 

"It won't be so another Spring," he said. 

Altogether it hushed us. I was holding the 
picture of the temple of the future years — for 
those to come, especially for the young ones, who 
were torn and wanted to find themselves for a 
time. 

"You say he is not going to cut anything from 
the pasture-grove?" I repeated. 

"No." 

There was ease in that again. We walked back 
with the falling dusk — across a winter wheat 

[306] 



THE ABBOT DEPARTS 



field that lay in water like rice. The town came 
closer, and we smelled it. The cold mist in the 
air livened every odour. It is a clean little town 
as towns go, but we knew very well what the 
animals get from us. ... I was thinking also 
what a Chinese once said to me in Newchwang. 
He had travelled in the States, and reported that 
it was a long time before he could get accustomed 
to the aroma of the white man's civilisation. 
Newchwang was long on the vine at that very 
moment, but he did not get that. I did not tell 
him. That which we are, we do not sense. Our 
surfaces are only open to that which we are not. 
We must depart from our place and ourselves, in 
order to catch even a fleeting glimpse, or scent, 
of our being. The Abbot and I lifted our noses 
high. The post-office was thick with staleness 
that held its own, though chilled. I was glad to 
have the horse feel as I did, and clear out for 
the edge of the Lake where we belonged. 

. . . We went many days that Spring. The 
town thought us quite bereft. We were present 
for the hawthorn day; saw the ineffable dogwoods 
at their highest best ; the brief bloom of the hick- 
ories when they put on their orchids and seemed 
displeased to be caught in such glory by human 
eyes. I love the colour and texture of hickory 
wood, but it insists on choosing its own place 
to live. . . . We saw the elms breaking another 
day, and the beech leaves come forth from 

[307] 



CHILD AND COUNTRY 



their wonderful twists of brown, formed the 
Fall before. Everything about the beech-tree is 
of the highest and most careful selection; no other 
tree seems so to have forgotten itself; a noble 
nature that has lost the need of insisting its de- 
mands and making its values known, having long 
since called unto itself the perfect things. . . . 
There was one early May day of high northwind, 
that we entered the beech-wood, and saw those 
forest lengths of trunk swaying in a kind of plane- 
tary rhythm. Full-length the beeches gave, and 
returned so slowly, a sweeping vibration of their 
own, too slow and vast for us to sense. I thought 
of a group of the great women of the future gath- 
ered together to ordain the way of life. There 
is no holier place than a beech-wood. . . . 

The Abbot's father repaired the cabin for us 
— put in the fireplace and the windows to the 
north. Many nights the Chapel kindred have 
spent there, in part or as a party; and it is the 
centre of the wonderful days of our Spring Quest- 
ing, when human-kind brings a thirst almost in- 
tolerable for the resuming of the Mother's magic. 
. . . We want it a place some day for many of 
the great little books of all time — the place for 
the Stranger to lodge and for Youth to come into 
its own. The Abbot's father who has made it all 
possible seems to like the dream, too. 

. . . But the Abbot has gone back to school. 
I think it is only temporary. . . . He remained 

[308] 



THE ABBOT DEPARTS 



after the others some weeks ago, and said to me 
quite coldly: 

"They have decided to make me go back to 
school " 

"Sit down," I answered. 

As I look back, I think that was said because 
I, too, felt the need of sitting down. He had been 
with me nearly a year. I had found him at first, 
immersed in brooding silence. In a way, that si- 
lence was chaotic; full day was far from rising 
upon it. He is without ambition in the worldly 
sense. Ambition is a red devil of a horse, but 
he gets you somewhere. One overcomes Inertia in 
riding far and long on that mount. He takes you 
to the piled places where the self may satisfy for 
the moment all its ravishing greeds. This is 
not a great thing to do. One sickens of this; all 
agony and disease comes of this. The red horse 
takes you as far as you will let him, on a road 
that must be retraced, but he gets you somewhere ! 
Inertia does not. The point is, one must not slay 
the red horse of ambition until one has another 
mount to ride. 

The Abbot caught the new mount quickly. He 
seemed to have had his hand on the tether when 
he came. The name of the red horse is Self. 
The white breed that we delight to ride here 
might be called generically Others. The Abbot 
was astride a fine individual at once — and away. 
. . . He is but fifteen now. With utmost impar- 

[309] 



CHILD AND COUNTRY 

tiality I should say that wonderful things have 
happened to him. 

They said at his home that he has become or- 
derly; that he rises early and regularly, a little 
matter perhaps, but one that was far from habit- 
ual before. They told me that he works with a 
fiery zeal that is new in their house; that he is 
good-tempered and helpful. I knew what he was 
doing here from day to day, and that he was 
giving me a great deal of that joy which cannot 
be bought, and to which the red horse never runs. 

But the town kept hammering at his parents' 
ears, especially his former teachers, his pastor and 
Sabbath-school teacher, the hardware man. I 
asked his father to bring the critics for a talk in 
the Study, but they did not come. A friend of the 
family came, a pastor from Brooklyn. The ap- 
pointment was made in such a way that I did not 
know whether he was for or against the Abbot's 
wish to remain in the work here. I told the story 
of the Abbot's coming, of his work and my ideas 
for him ; that I would be glad to keep him by me 
until he was a man, because I thought he was a 
very great man within and believed the training 
here would enable him to get himself out. 

My main effort with the Abbot, as I explained, 
was to help him develop an instrument commen- 
surate in part with his big inner energies. I told 
them how I had specialised in his case to culti- 
vate a positive and steadily-working brain-grip; 

[310] 



THE ABBOT DEPARTS 



how I had sought to install a system of order 
through geometry, which I wasn't equipped to 
teach, but that one of the college men was lead- 
ing him daily deeper into this glassy and ordered 
plane. 

The fact is, the Abbot had my heart because 
he loved his dreams, but I used to tell him every 
day that a man is not finished who has merely 
answered a call to the mountain; that Jesus him- 
self told his disciples that they must not remain 
to build a temple on the mountain of Transfigura- 
tion. Going up to Sinai is but half the mystery; 
the gifted one must bring stone tablets down. If 
in impatience and anger at men, he shatter the 
tablets, he has done ill toward himself and toward 
men, and must try once more. 

It appears that I did most of the talking and 
with some energy, believing that the Abbot had 
my best coming, since the hostility against his 
work here had long been in the wind from the 
town. ... It was the next day that the boy told 
me that the decision had gone against us. I cannot 
quite explain how dulled it made me feel. The 
depression was of a kind that did not quickly lift. 
I was willing to let any one who liked hold the 
impression that the obligation was all my way, 
but there was really nothing to fight. I went to 
see the Abbot's father shortly afterward. We 
touched just the edges of the matter. As I left 
he assured me: 

[311] 



CHILD AND COUNTRY 



"The minister said that he didn't think the boy- 
would come to any harm in your Study." 

There was no answer to that. . . . And yet, 
as I have said, we have come up in different ways 
from the townspeople. The manuscripts that go 
forth from this Study are not designed to sim- 
plify matters for them, and the books we read in 
the main are not from the local library. One 
should really rise to a smile over a matter like 
this. The fact is, I said to the Abbot: 

"Go and show them your quality. There's no 
danger of your falling into competitive study. 
Show them that you can move in and around and 
through the things they ask of you. We're always 
open when you want to come. You're the first 
and always one of us. You've got the philosophy 
— live it. This is just a mission. Take it this 
way, Abbot. Take it as an honour — a hard task 
for which you are chosen, because you are ready. 
Make your days interpret the best of you. Go to 
it with all your might. Feel us behind you — root- 
ing strong — and hurry back." 



[312] 



2 9 

THE DAKOTAN 



IT was a rainy Fall night. The Dakotan came 
in barefooted with two large bundles of 
copy. It was a bit cold to take the ground 
straight, but he had walked along the bluff 
for some distance in absolute darkness, over grassy 
hollows filled with water as well as bare patches 
of clay. One's shelf of shoes is pretty well used 
up on a day like this, and one learns that much 
labour can be spared by keeping his shoes for in- 
door use. Incidentally, it is worth having a gar- 
den, walled if necessary, for the joy of hoeing 
flowers and vegetables barefooted. ... I had 
just about finished the work of the evening. It 
would not have mattered anyway. The Dakotan 
sat down on the floor before the fire and was 
still as a spirit. He has no sense of time nor 
hurry; he would have waited an hour or two, 
or passed along quite as genially as he came, with- 
out my looking up. 

But one does not often let a friend go like this. 
These things are too fine, of too pure a pleasant- 

[313] 



CHILD AND COUNTRY 



ness. One does not learn the beauty of them un- 
til one has come far through terror and turmoil. 
It is almost a desecration to try to put such things 
into words; in fact, one cannot touch with words 
the heart of the mystery. One merely moves 
around it with an occasional suggestive sentence 
and those who know, smile warmly over the 
writer's words. 

The Study was red with fire-light. Burning 
wood played with its tireless gleam upon the 
stones, upon the backs of books, and into the few 
pictures, bringing the features forth with restless 
familiarity. I left the desk and came to the big 
chair by the fire. I was glad he was there. I 
think I had been watching him intently for sev- 
eral seconds before he looked up. ... I had 
not been thinking of Thoreau; at least, not for 
days, but it suddenly came to me that this 
was extraordinarily like Thoreau, who had come 
in so silently through the darkness to share the 
fire. I found that he had just been writing of the 
relations of men, the rarer moments of them ; and 
queerly enough, I found that night more of the 
master of Walden in his work. 

The Dakotan is twenty. All summer he has 
been doing some original thinking on the subject 
of Sound. When I was his age, Tyndall was 
the big voice on this subject; yet we have come 
to think in all humbleness that Tyndall only 
touched his toes in the stream. The Dakotan has 

[314] 



THE DAKOTAN 



spent the last few years afield. He is a tramp, 
a solitaire, a student at the sources of life. Things 
have been made easier for him here. He took to 
this life with the same equableness of mind that 
he accepted the companions of hardship and 
drudgery on the open road. Throughout the last 
summer he has moved about field and wood and 
shore, between hours of expression at his machine, 
in a kind of unbroken meditation. I have found 
myself turning to him in hard moments. Some 
of our afternoons together, little was said, but 
much accomplished. A few paragraphs follow 
from the paper brought in on this particular night : 

"Vibration is the law that holds the Universe 
together. Its energy is the great primal Breath. 
Vibration is life and light, heat and motion. 
Without it, there would be blackness and universal 
death. From the almost static state of rock and 
soil, we have risen steadily in vibration up through 
the first four senses, to Sound, the fifth. The 
scope of Sound-vibration yet to be experienced by 
us is beyond our wildest imagination. 

"Sounds are the different rates of vibration in 
all things. As yet we know Sound as we know 
most other things, merely on the dense physical 
plane. The next great discoveries in higher phe- 
nomena will be made in the realm of Sound. The 
most marvellous powers are to be disenchanted 
from vibrations as yet inaudible. The present 
enthusiasm over telepathy is merely the start of 
far greater phenomena to come. 

"It is my belief that over ninety per cent of 

[315] 



CHILD AND COUNTRY 



the sounds we know and hear are injurious, low- 
ering, disquieting and scattering to all higher 
thought, to intuition and all that is fine and of 
the spirit. There is not one human voice in a 
thousand that is of a' quieting influence and 
friendly to higher aspirations. The voice is a 
filler, in lieu of shortages of intellect and intui- 
tion. More and more, among fine people explana- 
tions are out of order. A man is silent in propor- 
tion to what he knows of real fineness and as- 
piration. Outside of that speech which is abso- 
lutely a man's duty to give out, one can tell almost 
to the ampere, the voltage of his inner being, or 
its vacantness and slavery, by the depth of his 
listening silences, or the aimlessness of his filling 
chatter. It is only those few who have come to 
know, through some annealing sorrow, sickness, 
or suffering, and draw away from the crowds and 
noises into the Silence, that become gifted with all- 
knowing counsels. 

"There is a sound born from every thought, 
action, or aspiration of man, whether or a high or 
a low order, a sound not to be heard but felt, by 
any one fine and sensitive enough to receive the 
impression. From the collective, intuitive thoughts 
of attuned groups of men, thinking or working as 
one toward a high end, there arises a sound which 
is to be felt as a fine singing tingle by all in the 
vicinity. The work here proves this. At times 
there is an exquisite singing in the air, not audible 
but plainly to be felt, and a kind of emanation 
of light in the Chapel. We all lean forward. The 
voice and thought of one has become the voice 
and thought of all; what is to be said is sensed 
and known before it is uttered; all minds are one. 

[316] 



THE DAKOTAN 



". . . There are moments in the soft, chang- 
ing, growing, conceiving hours of dawn and sun- 
set when Mother Nature heaves a long deep sigh 
of perfect peace, content and harmony. It is 
something of this that the wild birds voice, as 
they greet the sun at dawn, and again as they give 
sweet and melancholy notes at his sinking in the 
quiet of evening. Birds are impressed from with- 
out. They are reasonless, ecstatic, spontaneous, 
giving voice as accurately and joyously as they 
can to the vibrations of peace and harmony — to 
the Sounds, which they feel from Nature. Ani- 
mals and birds are conscious of forces and crea- 
tures, we cannot see. . . . Unless we decide that 
birds generate their songs within; that they rea- 
son and study their singing, we must grant that 
they hear and imitate from Nature, as human 
composers do. The process in any case has not 
to do with intellect and reason, but with sensi- 
tiveness and spirit. One does not need to acquire 
intellect and reasoning, to have inspiration, sensi- 
tiveness, and spirit. It is the childlike and spon- 
taneous, the sinless and pure-of-heart that attain 
to psychic inspiration. 

"Have you ever seen at close range the rapt, 
listening, inspired look of the head of a wild bird 
in flight? Has anything fine and pure ever come 
to you from a deep look into the luminous eyes 
of a bird fresh from the free open? 

". . . Study the very voices of spiritual men. 
They are low-pitched, seeming to issue from deep 
within the man ; one strains to catch what is said, 
especially if he be used to the far-carrying, sharp, 
metallic, blatant speech of the West. Certain 
ancients were better versed in the potency of 

[317] 



CHILD AND COUNTRY 



sounds than we are to-day. Study in occult writ- 
ings the magic pronunciation of Aum, Amitabha, 
Allah, of certain chants and spirit-invoking incan- 
tations of old, and one draws a conception of the 
powers of friendly sounds and the injurious ef- 
fects of discordant sounds, such as we are sur- 
rounded by. . . . 

"Many of us in the West, who are so used to 
din and broken rhythm, would call the Vina, that 
Oriental harp-string of the soul, a relic of bar- 
baric times. But Vina's magic cry at evening 
brings the very elementals about the player. The 
voices of Nature, the lapping of water, bird-song, 
roll of thunder, the wind in the pines — these are 
sounds that bring one some slight whit of the 
grandeur and majestic harmony of the Universe. 
These are the voice of kung, 'the great tone' in 
Oriental music, corresponding somewhat to F, the 
middle note of the piano, supposed to be peace- 
invoking. In northern China the Buddhist priests 
sit out in evening, listening raptly to kung, the 
'all-harmonious sound of the Hoang-ho rushing 
by.' One longs to be the intimate of such medi- 
tations." 



[318] 



3o 
THE DAKOTAN (Continued) 



I FIRST heard of the Dakotan* at a time 
when I was not quite so interested in the 
younger generation. A woman friend out 
in his country wrote me, and sent on some 
of his work. I was not thrilled especially, though 
the work was good. She tried again, and I took the 
later manuscript to bed with me, one night when 
I was "lifted out," as the mason said. It did not 
work as designed. Instead of dropping off on 
the first page, I tossed for hours, and a letter ask- 
ing him to come to Stones tudy was off in the first 
mail in the morning. 

He is drawing entirely from his own centre of 
origins. That was established at once, and has 
been held. The only guiding required, since he 
is a natural writer, has been on the one point of 
preserving a child-like directness and clarity of 
expression. It is not that he wants the popular 
market; the quality of his bent precludes that for 

*H. A. Sturtzel. 
[319] 



CHILD AND COUNTRY 



the present. Moreover, he can live here on what 
thousands of men in America spend for cigars, but 
our ideal of writing has to do with the straight 
line between the thought and the utterance. 

A man's style has little or nothing to do with 
the words, or the sentence, paragraph or even his 
native eccentricities of technique; a man's style 
has to do with the manner of his thinking. As 
for words and the implements of writing, the 
more nearly they are made to parallel the run 
of thought, the better the work. 

One does not learn the Dakotan's kind in a 
day or a year. There is a continual changing 
and refining production about our truest friends — 
the same thing in a woman that a man can love 
in the highest — that quickens us always to higher 
vision and deeper humanity. The point is that 
we must change and increase to be worthy of our 
truest relations. One must always be restless and 
capacious. When our eyes rest on the horizon, 
and do not yearn to tear it apart; when the throb 
of the Quest sinks low in our breast — it is time 
to depart. You who in mid-life think you have 
arrived somewhere — in profession, in trade, in 
world-standing — know that death has already 
touched you, that the look of your face is 
dissolute. 

I have said to the Dakotan and to the others 
here: "It was good for you to come — but the 
time may arrive, when it will be just as good for 

[380] 



THE DAKOTAN 



you to go. . . . When you see me covering old 
fields; when you come here for continual reviews 
of my little story; when your mind winces with 
the thought of what I am to do and say next, be- 
cause you know it well already — arise and come 
no more, but in passing, say to me, 'To-day we 
did not get out of the circle of yesterday.' ... I 
shall know what is meant, and it shall be good 
for you to tell me, since one forgets. It may be 
that there is still enough strength for another voy- 
age — that I may be constrained to leave Tele- 
machus and go forth to the edge of the land "where 
lights twinkle among the rocks and the deep moans 
round with many voices." 

Recently the Dakotan told me of a dream, and 
I asked him to write it. I think he will draw 
nearer to you, if you read the story that he brought 
me: 

"This is the latest and most complete of many 
under-water dreams that have come to me. In 
their thrall as a child I learned the deeps of fear. 
I do not know why dreams of mine are so often 
associated with water, unless at some time, way 
back in the beginnings, the horror of a water- 
existence has been so stamped upon me that it has 
been retained in consciousness. As a child, water 
and strong winds drove me to tears. I can re- 
member no other things that brought marked 
fear but these. One incident of wind, on a boat 
going to Block Island Light-house, off Newport, 
remains as vivid to this day as when it was en- 

[321] 



CHILD AND COUNTRY 



acted, and I was not yet five at the time. Every 
one wondered at these peculiar fears, but the ex- 
planation is plainer if one can look either back or 
beyond. 

"Knowledge is but a glimmering of past experi- 
ence. We are the condensed sum of all our past 
activities. Normal mind and memory are only 
of the immediate present, only as old as our bod- 
ies, but once in a long time we fall by chance into 
certain peculiar conditions of body, mind, or soul 
— conditions that are invoking to great reaches 
of consciousness back into the past. Normally our 
shell is too thick; we are too dense and too con- 
scious of our present physical being and vitality, 
for the ancient one within us to interpret to the 
brain. Even in sleep, the brain is usually em- 
broiled or littered with daily life matters. The 
brain has not yet become a good listener, and the 
voice of the inner man is ever a hushed whisper. 

"The exceptionally low temperature of my body 
was the immediate cause of this dream. Here is 
a conviction that I brought up from it: I believe 
that any one by putting himself into a state of 
very low temperature and vibration, almost akin 
to hibernation, may be enabled to go back in con- 
sciousness toward the Beginnings. Evidently red 
blood is wholly of man, but in some way the white 
corpuscles of the blood seem to be related to the 
cold-blooded animals and hence to the past. Un- 
der conditions, such as sleeping on the ground or 
in a cold, damp place, these white corpuscles may 
be aided to gain ascendency over the heart, brain, 
and red corpuscles. This accomplished, the past 
may be brought back. 

"It was a cold, rainy Fall night that the dream 

[322] 



THE DAKOTAN 



came. A bleak east wind blowing along the lake- 
shore, probed every recess of the 'Pontchartrain,' 
the tiny open-work cottage I used. The place 
was flushed like a sieve with wind and rain. It 
leaked copiously and audibly, and there was no 
burrowing away from the storm. I sought the 
blankets early in a state of very low circulation. 
The last thing I was conscious of, as I drifted off, 
was the cold, the low sound of the wind, and the 
rain beating upon the roof. . . . 

"There was a cohering line through this dream, 
every detail stamped upon my consciousness so 
deeply that the memory of it upon awaking was 
almost as vivid as when I was immersed. ... It 
began very slowly with a growing perception of 
a low monotonous lap and wash of water and a 
slight heaving, lifting sensation, as of my being 
swayed gently to and fro. It was very cold, not 
the biting cold we know, but a dank, lifeless, pene- 
trating cold of water and darkness. . . . The 
manner of my own form was not clear to me; I 
was of too low a consciousness to be aware of 
many exterior particulars. I merely knew I be- 
longed to darkness and deep water. In fact, dur- 
ing the dream I had hardly a sense of being, ex- 
cept through the outer stimuli of cold and danger. 
These were horribly plain. That I was a crea- 
ture of the depths and dark, a bleached single-cell, 
was doubtless a mental conclusion from the 
waking contemplation afterward. In the dream, 
I seemed of vast size, and I believe all little 
creatures do, since they fill their scope as tightly 
as we. The spark of consciousness, or life within, 
seemed so faint that part of the time my body 
seemed a dead, immovable bulk. No sense of 

[323] 



CHILD AND COUNTRY 



self or body in comparison to outer things, was; 
existent, except when a larger form instilled me 
with fear. 

"My dream seemed a direct reversion back into 
the Beginnings, in form, consciousness, state of 
being, perception and instinct — everything — so 
that I actually lived, in infinitely dwindled con- 
sciousness, the terrible water-life. 

"All was blackness. I possessed some slight 
volition of life that contracted in the cold. I 
was not in any keen suffering; I seemed too low 
and numbed to sense to the full the unpleasantness 
of my condition. . . . Presently there came a 
dawning light which gradually grew stronger. I 
did not seem to have eyes, but was conscious of 
the ray seemingly through the walls of my body. 
Slowly it increased, to a sickly wan filter of grey. 
It was light shining through water, a light which 
would have been no light to a human being. To 
me it was intense and fearsome, seemed to reach 
centres of me that were sensitive beyond expres- 
sion. Though I was a mere blob, boneless and 
quivering, the ray was foreign and I knew what 
it was to cringe. 

"And now I find the difficulty of interpreting 
the dream exactly from the point of the Cell. 
These things that I write I could not know then, 
except in smallest measure. As our greater forces 
are diminished by passing through the brain, these 
little affairs are increased by adjustment to man's 
waking faculties. From now, I shall give the pic- 
ture as it appears to me from this distance : 

"As the light increased, I contracted and sank 
slowly into the depths. The bottom was not far. 
I descended in a flowing, undulating fashion and 

[324] 



THE DAKOTAN 



settled softly on the water-bed, beside a large, up- 
jutting fang of rock. It was black in the depths. 
The cold penetrated all. Torpid and prone, I lay 
there numbed into absolute quiescence. It seemed 
that a torpid inertia, doomed to be everlasting, 
had settled upon me. I knew no want, no desire, 
had not the slightest will to move, to rest, to sleep, 
to eat, even to exist, just the dimmest sense of 
watchfulness and fear. It was perfect hiberna- 
tion. I had descended into too low a degree of 
temperature and vibration to feel the need even of 
nourishment. I was becoming dead to the cold; 
everything was a pulseless void. I should never 
have generated an impulse to move again had not 
extraneous influences affected me after seeming 
ages had passed. 

"The bottom on which I now lay was of soft, 
oozy silt; about me were rocks, slippery and cov- 
ered with a coating of grey-green slime. Spots 
in the slime moved. I could hear it, or rather feel 
it — a sort of bubbling quake, mere beginnings of 
the life impulse. The tops and sides of the rocks 
were festooned with waving green fringes of 
growths, which trailed out into the water. Long, 
snakelike fronds and stems of whitish green, 
half-vegetable, half-animal, grew on the bottom. 
They were stationary at their bases, but were lithe 
and a-crawl with life in their stems, extending and 
contracting into the water at intervals, in a spiral, 
snakey manner. Their heads were like white- 
bleached flowers, with hairy lips, which contracted 
and opened constantly, engulfing the myriads of 
floating, microscopic forms. 

"Upon the heads of some of the creepers were 
ghostly phosphorescent lights, which winked on 

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CHILD AND COUNTRY 



and off at intervals as the stems waved gently to 
and fro. I did not have an instinctive fear of 
these. They seemed friendly. They lit up the 
black depths. They and I seemed of a similar 
bent; they feared the forms that I feared and 
contracted tight to the bottom when these enemies 
approached. There were certain permanent spots 
about me that gave off other lights at intervals. 
The whole bottom was a dim, vast region of many- 
coloured lights, or more properly, dim lambent 
glows, of blue, green and yellow, which winked 
and nodded on and off in the blackness. They 
seemed to be the decoys of the feeders that pos- 
sessed them. Each glow lit up a circle in the 
depths and seemed to attract food to the watcher 
who waved it. They were all cold lights, mere 
phosphorescent gleams without the searching, 
penetrating qualities of the light I had first felt, 
and they did not bother me. 

". . . The ray was filtering down again. It 
was this that kept me alive. It increased until 
all above was a wan grey. One by one the many- 
coloured lights of the bottom winked off, the long 
feelers and contractile stems were drawn in, and 
the whole bottom became once more a motionless, 
dead-grey world. . , . Little sacks without eyes 
in that grey light, the gorging not begun, kept 
alive by the whip of fear. The low life would 
have gone on to death or dissemination had it not 
been for exterior forces which reached me in the 
shape of Fear. I shall never forget it — the Fear 
of the Black Bottoms. 

"There was a long, hideous suspense, as the 
Ray held me, and the thing that I feared was not 
the Ray, but belonged with it. In the midst of 

[326] 



THE DAKOTAN 



a kind of freezing paralysis, the struggle to flee 
arose within me. Yet I was without means of lo- 
comotion. Through sheer intensity of panic I 
expanded. Then there was a thrusting forward 
of the inner vital centre against the forward wall 
of the sack. It was the most vital part of me that 
was thrust forward, the heart of a rudiment, so 
to speak. That which remained, followed in a 
kind of flow. The movement was an undulation 
forward, brought about by the terror to escape. 

"Fear is always connected with Behind. With 
the approach of Danger I had started forward. 
There had been no forward nor backward be- 
fore, nor any sides or top to me. Now a back, 
a dorsal aspect, came into being, and the vital cen- 
tre was thrust forward within the cell, so as to 
be farthest away from the danger. It is in this 
way that the potential centre of an organism came 
to be in the front, in the head, looking forward 
and always pointed away from the danger — pro- 
tected to the last. 

"As I flowed forward, the sticky fluid substance 
of my body sucked into the oozy bottom. I spat- 
ted myself as flat as possible, seeming to press 
the tenderest parts closest to the bottom. And it 
is in this way that the vital parts of organ- 
isms came to be underneath, on the ventral aspect, 
protected from above by the sides and back. As 
the Fear increased, I gained in strength and speed 
of locomotion, the same parts of my form pro- 
truding rhythmically, faster and easier, until I did 
not need to concentrate so intensely upon the 
moving-act. Doubtless I covered ages of evolu- 
tion in the dream. It is in this way through the 
stimulus of Fear that the rudiments of organs of 

[327] 



CHILD AND COUNTRY 



locomotion were begun. And they came in the 
Beginnings on the ventral side, because that side 
was pressed close to the earth. Every sense, voli- 
tion, reasoning power — everything — was gener- 
ated and fostered by Fear in the Beginnings. So 
Fear is really the Mother of our first overcoming 
of Inertia. 

"I do not recall being devoured by that creature 
of the Ray; and yet it seems as if half the life in 
the Bottoms was clutched in the torture of that 
danger. The other half was gorging. . . . 
Gorge, gorge, with unappeased appetite, body 
bulging to the bursting point, the Devourers all 
about me, the larger engulfing the smaller, not 
with mouths, but literally enclosing their prey with 
the walls of their bodies, so that the smaller 
flowed into the larger. And often the engulfed 
would be of greater length than the engulfer. . . . 

"There was a sound made by the gorging, a dis- 
tinct sound born of gluttony, not audible, but to 
be felt by my sensitive surfaces, a sort of emana- 
tion, not from the gorgers, but born from the 
engrossing intensity of the gorging act. I shall 
always remember it, a distinct 'ummmmmmm,' 
constant, and rising and falling at times to a trifle 
faster or lower pitch. 

"Always, as the Ray would cross above me, 
there would be a stoppage of the emanations from 
the gorgers, a sinking to the bottom, and a rising 
again. Also there were Shadows, sinister, flowing 
grey forms, that preyed about the rocky bottom. 
These were more felt by me than heard or seen, 
and instilled more deadly fear than the larger 
Shadows that passed above. The drama of the 
feeding seemed doomed to go on and on forever. 

[328] 



THE DAKOTAN 



Repletion would never have come to the Gorgers. 
Only Fear broke the spell. 

"I recall a last glimpse of that ghost-life of the 
depths. About the rocks, the long snake-like 
stems and feelers were extended, and the luring 
decoys waved and glowed again at the ends of 
the stalks. With the cessation of the feeding, 
began the vaster, unquenchable feeding of the en- 
gulfing plants. It was steady, monotonous, inex- 
haustible — the winking and waving of the blue- 
green glows, the clustering of the senseless prey, 
a sudden extinguishing of the light, devouring — 
then the nodding gleam again. No mercy, no feel- 
ing, no reason existed in this ghost-region of 
bleached and bloodless things. The law was the 
law of Fear and Gluttony. There was a thrall 
to the whole drama which I am powerless to 
express. 

". . . The embryo in the womb eats and as- 
similates, all unconscious. With life there is 
movement. The first movement takes the form of 
sucking-in that which prolongs life. Then there 
is the driving forward by Fear from without. 
Low life is a vibration between Fear and Glut- 
tony. In every movement is the gain of power 
to make another movement. That is the Law of 
life. 

"I opened my eyes. The wan grey light of 
morning was shining in my face. I felt weak and 
unrested. There were puddles of water on the 
foot of the bed. The blankets lay heavily about 
my limbs, and circulation was hardly sufficient to 
hold consciousness. The effects of the dream op- 
pressed me the rest of that day and for long after- 
ward." 

[329] 



3i 
THE HILL ROCKS 



OUR tendency is to return to the pioneers 
for inspiration. ... I was thinking 
this morning how in all our studies 
we had passed quickly over the intel- 
lectualists, the simplifiers, the synthesisers and 
explainers — -back to the sources of philosophy and 
sanctity. It is there that we find the flame. 
We linger and return to such men as Boehme, 
Fichte, Romini-Serbati, Frobel, Swedenborg. We 
delight in the few great and isolated names of 
Greece and Rome that are above style. We turn 
continually to the perpetual fountains of India, 
but seldom to Egypt. 

We love the prophets of the Old Testament, 
but despise chosen peoples at every appearance; 
we delight in the lineage of the Messiah; we are 
stimulated by the Hebrew literature, by its sym- 
bolism, its songs and precepts, the Oriental colour 
of it, the hierarchy of its saints, the strange splen- 
dour of its women, but as a book of devotion its 

[330] 



THE HILL ROCKS 



chief significance is that of a huge vessel prepared 
for the coming of a Master. 

The New Testament is our first book. Man- 
handled and perverted as it has been by early 
writers, who still wanted Moses and laboured un- 
der the misconception that Jesus was expounding 
the doctrines of Moses afresh, instead of refuting 
many of them — yet the New Testament stands 
highest above all hands pointing heavenward. 

In the case of the teacher here, it was not the 
so-called orthodoxy that accomplished this al- 
legiance to the New Testament. Modern churches 
drove him forth into the Farther East. It was 
the return from Patanjali and the Vedas and much 
of that excellent and ancient wisdom of the 
Earlier Arrival, that gave him a fresh surface for 
understanding the pilgrimage and the passion of 
Jesus. 

Our own Tolstoi has done much to restore the 
Son of Mary to a sceptical generation. To us Tol- 
stoi's great work is not through the vehicle of 
the novel. Though comparisons are everywhere 
questionable, it seems to us that the Russian's task 
on the later Scriptures is as significant as Luther's. 
Certainly he has prepared them to stand the more 
searching and penetrative gaze of the coming gen- 
eration. Many of the new voices rise to declare that 
it is doubtful if there really was an historic Jesus. 
Still the man matters less than his influence. His 
story is emphatically in the world; the spirit of 

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CHILD AND COUNTRY 



it lives above all dogma and vulgarity, even above 
nationalism. It is the breath of Brotherhood and 
Compassion. It is nearer to us and less complex 
than the story of the Buddha. 

Every such coming heightens the voltage of 
spiritual power in the world. The greatest stories 
of the world are the stories of such comings. Of 
first importance in the education of children is the 
institution of an ideal of the imminence of great 
helpers, the Compassionates. Children become 
starry-eyed as they listen. I think if we could 
all shake ourselves clear of the temporal and the 
unseemly, we should find deep in our hearts, a 
strange expectancy. A woman said, as we talked 
of these things: 

"I seem to have been expectant for centuries." 

When such ideals are held in mind, an adjust- 
ment of conduct follows at once. To be ready 
(I am not talking religiously) for a revered Guest, 
one immediately begins to put one's house in or- 
der. Indeed, there's a reproach in finding the need 
of rushed preparation, in the hastening to clear 
corners and hide unseemly objects; and yet, this 
is well if the reorganisation is more than a pass- 
ing thought. To make the ordering of one's 
house a life-habit is a very valid beginning in 
morality. 

We talk continually of the greatest of men; 
sometimes our voices falter, and sentences are not 
finished. We have found many things alike about 

[332 ] 



THE HILL ROCKS 



the Great Ones. First they had mothers who 
dreamed, and then they had poverty to acquaint 
them with sorrow. They came up hard, and they 
were always different from other children. They 
suffered more than the others about them, because 
they were more sensitive. 

They met invariably the stiffest foe of a fine 
child- — misunderstanding ; often by that time, even 
the Mother had lost her vision. Because they 
could not find understanding in men and women 
and children, they drew apart. Such youths are 
always forced into the silence. ... I often think 
of the education of Hiawatha by old Nokomis, the 
endless and perfect analogies of the forest and 
stream and field, by which a child with vision can 
gain the story of life. Repeatedly we have dis- 
cussed the maiden who sustained France — her girl- 
hood in the forests of Domremy. It was a forest 
eighteen miles deep to the centre, and so full of 
fairies that the priests had to come to the edge 
and give mass every little while to keep them 
in any kind of subjection. That incomparable 
maiden did not want the fairies in subjection. 
She was listening. From the centres of the for- 
est came to her the messages of power. . . . Once 
when the Chapel group had left, I sat thinking 
about this maiden ; and queerly enough, my mind 
turned presently to something in St. Luke, about 
the road to Emmaus — the Stranger who had 
walked with the disciples, and finally made him- 

[333] 



CHILD AND COUNTRY 

self known. And they asked one to the other after 
He had vanished: "Did not our hearts burn 
within us while He talked with us by the way, and 
while He opened to us the Scriptures*?" 

. . . Returning from their silences, these tor- 
ture-quickened youths found work to do — work 
that people could not understand. The people 
invariably thought there must be a trick about, 
the giving — that the eager one wanted hidden re- 
sults for self. . . . Invariably, they were pro- 
digious workers, men of incredible energy. Thus 
they ground themselves fine; and invariably, too, 
they were men of exalted personal conduct, though 
often they had passed before the fact was truly 
appreciated. 

First of all, they were honest — that was the 
hill-rock. Such men come to make crooked paths 
straight, but first they straighten out themselves. 
They stopped lying to other men, and what was 
greater still, they stopped lying to themselves. 
Sooner or later men all came to understand that 
they had something good to give — those closest 
to them, not always seeing it first. . . . 

You couldn't buy them — that was first estab- 
lished; then they turned the energies of their 
lives outward instead of in. The something im- 
mortal about them was the loss of the love of self. 
Losing that, they found their particular something 
to do. They found their work — the one thing 
that tested their own inimitable powers — and that, 

[334] 



THE HILL ROCKS 



of course, proved the one thing that the world 
needed from them. As self -men they were not 
memorable. Self -men try to gather in the results 
to themselves. The world-man wants to give 
something to his people — the best he has from his 
hand or brain or spirit. That's the transaction 
— the most important in any life — to turn out 
instead of in. . . . Here I am repeating the old 
formula for the making of men, as if in the thrill 
of the absolutely new — the eternal verity of lov- 
ing one's neighbour. 

Each man of us has his own particular knack 
of expression. Nothing can happen so important 
to a man as to find his particular thing to do. The 
best thing one man can do for another is to help 
him find his work. The man who has found his 
work gets from it, and through it, a working idea 
of God and the world. The same hard prepara- 
tion that makes him finally valuable in his par- 
ticular work, integrates the character that finally 
realises its own religion. The greatest wrong that 
has been done us by past generations is the de- 
tachment of work and religion — setting off the 
Sabbath as the day for expressing the angel in us, 
and marking six days for the progress of the 
animal. 

All good work is happiness — ask any man who 
has found his work. He is at peace when the 
task is on, at his best. He is free from envy and 
desire. Even his physical organs are healthfully 

[335] 



CHILD AND COUNTRY 



active. The only way to be well is to give forth. 
When we give forth work that tests our full pow- 
ers, we are replenished by the power that drives 
the suns. Giving forth, we automatically ward 
off the destructive thoughts. Our only safe in- 
breathing physically, mentally, and spiritually is 
from the upper source of things — not in the 
tainted atmospheres of the crowds. A man's own 
work does not kill. It is stimulus, worry, ambi- 
tion, the tension and complication of wanting re- 
sults for self, that kill. 

Each man stands as a fuse between his race 
and the creative energy that drives the whole 
scheme of life. If he doubles this fuse in to self, 
he becomes a non-connective. He cannot receive 
from the clean source, nor can he give. What 
he gets is by a pure animal process of struggle 
and snatch. He is a sick and immoral creature. 
Turning the fuse outward, he gives his service 
to men, and dynamos of cosmic force throw their 
energy through him to his people. He lives. Ac- 
cording to the carrying capacity of his fuse is he 
loved and remembered and idealised for the work 
he does. 

A jar of water that has no lower outlet can 
only be filled so full before it spills, but open a 
lower vent and it can be filled according to the 
size of the outpouring. Now there is a running 
stream in the vessel. All life that does not run 
is stagnant. 

[336] 



THE HILL ROCKS 



There is a task for every man. We are born 
with different equipments, but if we have a gift, be 
very sure it is not fortuitous. We have earned 
it. It should make us the finer workman. But 
all work is good. The handle of an axe is a 
poem. 

We would never destroy the natural resources 
of the earth, if we, as men, found our work. 
Rather we would perceive the way of old Mother 
Earth who turns to her God for light and power, 
and from that pure impregnation, brings forth her 
living things. We would shudder at all destruc- 
tion and greed, and perceive as good workmen 
the excellent values of woods and coals and gases, 
and the finer forces of the soil. We would per- 
ceive that they are to be cared for; that their 
relation to man is service ; that they have no rela- 
tion to great individual fortunes. These are the 
free gifts from our Mother. As good workmen 
we would realise that greed and competition pulls 
upon, and tortures into activity, all that is in- 
sane within us. 

The thing that brings men together in real talk, 
that makes the hush in Chapel or where talk is 
anywhere; the thing that clutches the throat, and 
sometimes brings the smart to the eyes — is the 
quality of men who have found their work, and 
who have lost the love of self. They are the 
conservers. They see first what is good for us 
to do and be. We follow their thoughts in action 

[337 1 



CHILD AND COUNTRY 



afterward, as water follows the curve of a basin. 
They go after the deep-down men ; they dream of 
the shorter passages to India; they sense the new 
power in the world; their faces are turned to the 
East for the rising of new stars. Often they die 
to make us see, but others spring to finish their 
work. Our hearts burn within us when we speak 
of their work. 



[888] 



32 

ASSEMBLY OF PARTS 



OTHERS have come ; there are fresh won- 
ders to me, but this book must close. 
. . . The development of each young 
mind is like doing a book — each a dif- 
ferent book. Fascination attends the work. I 
assure you a teacher gets more than he can give. 
, . . Every mill should be a school. Every pro- 
fessional man should call for his own. A man's 
work in the world should be judged by his con- 
structive contacts with the young minds about 
him. A man should learn the inspiration which 
comes in service for the great Abstraction, the 
many, from which there is no answer; but he can 
only become powerful and unerring by trying out 
the results of his offerings face to face with his 
own group. It should be as natural for a matured 
man to gather his mental and spiritual familiars 
about him as it is for him to become the head of 
a domestic establishment. 

There is chance for the tradesmen to turn a 

[339] 



CHILD AND COUNTRY 



little from ledger and margin, to the faces of 
the young about them — those who have come for 
the wages of bread. Many philanthropists would 
carve their names on stone, as great givers to the 
public. The public will not take these things 
personally ; the public laughs and lightly criticises. 
Men who have nothing but money to give away 
cannot hope to receive other than calculating looks 
and laughter that rings with derision. 

The time will come when matters of trade in 
the large shall be conducted nationally and mu- 
nicipally. The business of man is to produce 
something. The man who produces nothing, but 
who sits in the midst of other men's goods, offer- 
ing them for sale at a price greater than he paid, 
such a man moves in the midst of a badly-lit dis- 
trict of many pitfalls. It is the same with a man 
at a desk, before whom pass many papers repre- 
senting transactions of merchandise and whose 
business it is to take a proprietary bite out of 
each. He develops a perverted look at life, and 
a bad bill of moral health. There is no excep- 
tion to this, though he conduct a weekly bible les- 
son for the young, even move his chair to a church 
every seventh day. 

The drama of the trade mind is yet to be writ- 
ten. It is a sordid story; the figure at the last 
is in no way heroic. It would not be a popular 
story if done well. 

The time is not far off, except to those whose 

[340] 



ASSEMBLY OF PARTS 



eyes are dim, when countries will be Fatherlands 
in the true sense — in the sense of realising that 
the real estate is not bounded land, vaulted gold, 
not even electrified matter, but the youth of the 
land. Such is the treasure of the Fatherland. 
The development of youth is the first work of 
man ; the highest ideal may be answered first hand. 
Also through the development of the young, the 
father best puts on his own wisdom and rectitude. 

The ideal of education has already been re- 
versed at the bottom. There is pandemonium 
yet; there is colossal stupidity yet, but Order is 
coming in,, It would be well for all men medi- 
tatively to regard a kindergarten in action. Here 
are children free in the midst of objects designed 
to supply a great variety of attractions. There 
is that hum in the room. It is not dissonance. 
The child is encouraged to be himself and express 
himself; never to impinge upon his neighbour's 
rights, but to lose himself in the objects that draw 
him most deeply. 

I have mentioned the man who caught the spir- 
itual dream of all this, who worked it out in life 
and books. One of his books was published nearly 
a hundred years ago. It wasn't a book on kinder- 
garten, but on the education of man. I have not 
read this of Frobel's work. I wanted to do these 
studies my own way, but I know from what I have 
seen of kindergartens, and what teachers of kinder- 
gartens have told me, that the work is true — that 

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CHILD AND COUNTRY 



"The Education of Man" is a true book. Nor 
would it have lived a hundred years otherwise. 

The child is now sent to kindergarten and for 
a year is truly taught. The process is not a filling 
of brain, but an encouragement of the deeper pow- 
ers, their organisation and direction. At the end 
of the year, the child is sent into the first grade, 
where the barbaric process of competitive educa- 
tion and brain-cramming is carried on as sincerely 
as it was in Frobel's time. ... A kindergarten 
teacher told me in that low intense way, which 
speaks of many tears exhausted : 

"I dare not look into the first-grade rooms. We 
have done so differently by them through the first 
year. When the little ones leave us, they are 
wide open and helpless. They are taken from 
a warm bath to a cold blast. Their little faces 
change in a few days. Do you know the ones 
that stand the change best*? The commoner chil- 
dren, the clever and hard-headed children. The 
little dreamers — the sensitive ones — are hurt and 
altered for the worse. Their manner changes 
to me, when I see them outside. You do not know 
how we have suffered." 

Some of the greatest teachers in America to- 
day are the kindergarten teachers; not that they 
are especially chosen for quality, but because they 
have touched reality in teaching. They have seen, 
even in the very little ones, that response which is 
deeper than brain. If the great ideal that is car- 

[342] 



ASSEMBLY OF PARTS 



ried out through their first year were continued 
through seven years, the generation thus directed 
would meet life with serenity and without greed. 
They would make over the world into a finer place 
to be. 

I wonder if I may dare to say it once more? 
... It came this way in Chapel just a few days 
ago. There was a pencil in my hand, and some- 
thing of man's ideal performance here below ap- 
peared more than ever clearly. I am putting down 
the picture, much as it came then, for the straight- 
»est way to write anything is as you would tell it : 

". . . This pencil is a man, any man. Above is 
spirit; below matter. The world of spirit is fin- 
ished. The plan is already thought out there, 
to the utmost detail. This above is the Breath, 
the Conception, the Emanation, the Dream, the 
Universal Energy — philosophers have called it by 
many names, but they mean the God-Idea 
wrought of necessity in Spirit, since God is spirit. 

"The world of matter below is not finished. 
Certain parts are completed, but not all, and the 
assembly of parts is just begun. The material 
world is lost in the making of parts, forgetting 
that the plan is one — that the parts of matter 
must be assembled into a whole — that a replica 
must be made in matter of the one great spiritual 
Conception. So long as men are identified with 

[343 ] 



CHILD AND COUNTRY 



parts, there is dissonance from the shops of earth, 
a pulling apart instead of together. 

"The many are almost ready to grasp the great 
unifying conception. This is the next step for 
the human family as a whole; this the present 
planetary brooding. Much we have suffered from 
identifying ourselves with parts. Rivalries, boun- 
daries, jealousies, wars — all have to do with the 
making of parts. Beauty, harmony, peace and 
brotherhood have to do with the assembly of parts 
into one. That which is good for the many is 
good for the one; and that which is good for the 
one is good for the many — the instant we leave 
the part and conceive the whole. 

"All the high-range voices for hundreds of 
years have proclaimed that the plan is one. The 
world to-day is roused with the Unifiers — voices 
of men in every city and plain crying out that we 
are all one in aim and meaning, that the instru- 
ments are tuned, the orchestra ready, the music 
in place — but the players, alas, lost as yet in 
frenzy for their own little parts. The baton of 
the leader is lifted, but they do not hear. In 
their self -promulgation they have not yet turned 
as one to the conductor's eyes. The dissonance 
is at its highest, yet the hour has struck for the 
lift of harmony. 

"Look again at the pencil that stands for man. 
Above is the spiritual plan all finished. Every 
invention, every song and poem and heroism to 

[344 ] 



ASSEMBLY OF PARTS 



be, is there. One by one for ages, the aspiring in- 
telligence of man has touched and taken down 
the parts of this spiritual plan, forced the parts 
into matter, making his dream come true. Thus 
have come into the world our treasures. We pre- 
serve them — every gift from a spiritual source. 
Often we preserve them (until they are fully un- 
derstood) against our will. The mere matter- 
models break down and are lost, for matter 
changes endlessly until it is immortalised, as our 
bodies must be through the refinement of spiritual 
union. 

"Our pioneers, by suffering and labour, even by 
fasting and prayer, have made themselves fine 
enough to contact some little part of that finished 
plan. They have lowered it into matter for us 
to see — step by step — the song into notes, the 
poem into words, the angel into paint or stone; 
and the saints have touched dreams of great serv- 
ice, bringing down the pictures of the dream some- 
how in matter — and their own bodies often to 
martyrdom. . . . 

"Below the pencil is the world of matter, at 
this hour of its highest disorganisation. The very 
terror and chaos of the world is an inspiration 
to every unifying voice. Here below are already 
many parts; above, the plan as a whole and the 
missing parts. Man stands between — the first 
creature to realise that there is an above, as well 
as a below. All creatures beneath man are driven; 

[345] 



CHILD AND COUNTRY 



they look down. Man alone has looked up ; man 
has raised himself erect and may take what he will 
from the spiritual source to electrify his prog- 
ress. Man becomes significant the moment he re- 
alises that the plan is not for self, but for the 
race ; not for the part, but for the whole. 

"I have written it in many different ways, and 
told it in many more. There are endless analo- 
gies. Thousands before me have written and 
sung and told the same. It is the great Story. 
We see it working out even in these wrecking days. 
The plan is already in the souls of men. . . . 
And what has this to do with education*? 

"Everything. The brain sees but the part. 
The development of brain will never bring to 
child or man the conception of the spiritual plan. 
There is a man to come for every missing part. 
Each man, as he develops, is more and more a 
specialist. These missing parts shall be taken 
down from spirit and put into matter by men 
whose intrinsic gifts are developed to contact 
them. Thus have come the great poems and in- 
ventions so far, the splendid sacrifices of men, 
and all renunciation for the healing of the 
nations. 

"I would first find the work for the child. The 
finer the child the easier this part of the task. 
Then I would develop the child to turn to a 
spiritual source for his inspiration — his expecta- 
tion to a spiritual source for every good and 

[346] 



ASSEMBLY OF PARTS 

perfect thing. The dream is there ; the other half 
of the circle is to produce the dream in matter. 

"Education is thus religion — but not the man- 
idea of religion. It has nothing to do with creeds 
or cults, with affirmations or observances. It has 
to do with establishing connection with the 
sources of power, and bringing the energy down 
into the performance of constructive work in mat- 
ter. Religion isn't a feeling of piety or devout- 
ness; it is action. Spirituality is intellect in- 
spired. 

"The mountain is broad at the base only. 
There are many paths upward. These paths are 
far apart only at the base. On the shoulder of the 
mountain we hear the voices of those who have 
taken the other paths. Still higher, we meet. The 
Apex is a point; the plan is one. 

"I would teach the young mind to find his own 
voice, his own part, his own message. It is there 
above him. True training is the refinement, the 
preparing of a surface fine enough to receive his 
part. That is the inspiration. The out-breath — » 
the right hand of the process — is action, making a 
model in matter of the thing received. 

"All training that does not encourage the child 
to look into the Unseen for his power, not only 
holds, but draws him to the commonness of the 
herds. 

". . . Many men to-day can believe in angels 

[347] 



CHILD AND COUNTRY 



who cannot believe in fairies; but the child who 
sees the changes of light in the lowliest shadows, 
whose fancy is filled with little figures of the 
conservers and colourers of nature, shall in good 
time see the angels — and one of that host shall 
come forward (which is more important and to 
the point) bringing a task for the child to do. 

"I say to the children here: 'I do not see the 
things you do, and in that I am your inferior. 
They shut the doors upon me when I was little, 
not meaning to, but the world always does that. 
That fineness of seeing went out from my eyes, 
but it is so good a thing that I do not want you to 
lose it. And always I am ready to listen, when 
you tell me what you have seen.' " 



THE END 



[348] 



BY WILL LEVINGTON COMFORT 



MIDSTREAM 



... A hint from the first-year's recognition of 

a book that was made to remain in American lit- 
erature : 

Boston Transcript: If it be extravagance, let 
it be so, to say that Comfort's account of his child- 
hood has seldom been rivaled in literature. It 
amounts to revelation. Really the only parallels 
that will suggest themselves in our letters are the 
great ones that occur in Huckleberry Finn. . . . 
This man Comfort's gamut is long and he has 
raced its full length. One wonders whether the 
interest, the skill, the general worth of it, the 
things it has to report of all life, as well as the 
one life, do not entitle Midstream to the very 
long life that is enjoyed only by the very best of 
books. 

San Francisco Argonaut: Read the book. It 
is autobiography in its perfection. It shows more 
of the realities of the human being, more of god 
and devil in conflict, than any book of its kind. 



CONCERNING MIDSTREAM 

Springfield Republican: It is difficult to think 
of any other young American who has so cour- 
ageously reversed the process of writing for the 
"market" and so flatly insisted upon being taken, 
if at all, on his own terms of life and art. And 
now comes his frank and amazing revelation, Mid- 
stream, in which he captures and carries the read- 
er on to a story of regeneration. He has come 
far; the question is, how much farther will he go^ 

Mary Fan ton Roberts in The Craftsman: 
Beside the stature of this book, the ordinary novel 
and biography are curiously dwarfed. You read 
it with a poignant interest and close it with won- 
der, reverence and gratitude. There is something 
strangely touching about words so candid, and a 
draught of philosophy that has been pressed from 
such wild and bitter-sweet fruit. The message 
it contains is one to sink deep, penetrating and 
enriching whatever receptive soul it touches. This 
man's words are incandescent. Many of us feel 
that he is breathing into a language, grown trite 
from hackneyed usage, the inspiration of a quick- 
ened life. 

Ida Gilbert Myers in Washington Star: Cour- 
age backs this revelation. The gift of self-search- 
ing animates it. Honesty sustains it. And Mr. 



CONCERNING MIDSTREAM 

Comfort's rare power to seize and deliver his 
vision inspires it. It is a tremendous thing — the 
greatest thing that this writer has yet done. 

George Soule in The Little Review: Here is 
a man's life laid absolutely bare. A direct, big 
thing, so simple that almost no one has done it 
before — this Mr. Comfort has dared. People who 
are made uncomfortable by intimate grasp of 
anything, to whom reserve is more important than 
truth — these will not read Midstream through, 
but others will emerge from the book with 
a sense of the absolute nobility of Mr. Comfort's 
frankness. 

Edwin Markham in Hearst's Magazine: Will 
Levington Comfort, a novelist of distinction, has 
given us a book alive with human interest, with 
passionate sincerity, and with all the power of his 
despotism over words. He has been a wandering 
foot — familiar with many strands; he has known 
shame and sorrow and striving; he has won to 
serene heights. He tells it all without vaunt, re- 
lating his experience to the large meanings of 
life for all men, to the mystic currents behind 
life, out of which we come, to whose great deep 
we return. 

1 2 mo., Net, $1.25 



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